


Peace of Mind, Piece of Heart

by TheLostChimera



Category: Infinity Train (Cartoon), She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bigotry & Prejudice, Blood and Violence, Character Death, Childhood Trauma, Complicated Relationships, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/F, F/M, Gem Fusion, Guilt, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Imprisonment, Infidelity, Kissing, Loss of Identity, Loss of Limbs, M/M, Mind Control, Minor Character Death, Minor Original Character(s), Multi, Mutual Pining, On the Run, Possessive Behavior, References to Canon, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Sacrifice, Steven Universe Gets Therapy, Survivor Guilt, Trauma, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, War, catra gets therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 25,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24977902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLostChimera/pseuds/TheLostChimera
Summary: Catra is a soldier at the end of a war, and she's lost everything. Steven is a half-gem who's falling apart in the middle of an era of peace. Both find themselves unlikely companions aboard a mysterious, endless train where each car contains a whole new, logic defying pocket universe. While they struggle to get home, making friends and enemies along the way, an interplanetary war and a desperate search continue in their absence, their worlds spinning along despite their disappearance. It's a long journey home, but where exactly is home, anyway?
Relationships: Adora/Catra (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Bismuth/Pearl (Steven Universe), Bismuth/Pearl/Pink Diamond's Original Pearl | Volleyball, Bow/Glimmer (She-Ra), Connie Maheswaran/Steven Universe, Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), George/Lance (She-Ra), Jesse Cosay/Steven Universe, Kyle/Rogelio (She-Ra), Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra), Netossa/Spinnerella (She-Ra), Pearl/Pink Diamond’s Original Pearl | Volleyball, Perfuma/Scorpia (She-Ra), Ruby/Sapphire (Steven Universe)
Comments: 24
Kudos: 118





	1. The Banana Split Car

“The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered is to miss the train before.”

 **―** **G.K. Chesterton**

“ _People have hurt you, haven't they?”_

The metal floor beneath Catra felt cold in spite of the raging forge nearby. There was a deep, pervasive chill in her body that may have been responsible for that. She gazed up at the ceiling, watching the nearby flames cast flickering shadows on the dark steel ceiling.

Nearby, Hordak lay unmoving, partially pinned under a massive pile of debris and bent metal. Catra had beaten him in combat just minutes before, but any uplifting sense of victory eluded her. That was a recurring problem for her as of late. No matter how many battles she won, no matter how much territory she claimed, nothing filled the emptiness in her chest.

“ _They didn't believe you. Didn't trust you.”_

Double Trouble's words continued to echo in her mind, the painful stings carried on familiar voices thanks to their shapeshifting powers. Catra had begun to see them as a real ally. Maybe even a friend, though she'd never use that word, even to herself. They left her too, though, like everyone else.

Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, all fellow soldiers, all once-loyal comrades, now gone. Pushed away, quite deliberately, by Catra herself.

Before them, Scorpia. That was Catra's fault too, though she'd developed such a detestation for her own actions even as she continued to perform them that she wasn't really sure what she was truly to blame for anymore. Did she really push Scorpia away, or was it the Horde? Maybe her kind heart and soft soul just couldn't handle the necessities of war. Maybe her status as a princess, as unrecognized as it was, proved just too strong of an influence, pulling her to her fellow royals on the other side of battle. Even as Catra considered these possibilities, these excuses, she simply felt too weak to truly try to deflect the blame.

Shadow Weaver before her. Catra wasn't sure how to feel about her. A guardian, a monster, a teacher, a puppeteer? Any affection or familiarity was tainted by resentment, any hatred tempered by sentiment and history. Whatever Catra felt about Shadow Weaver, it was clear to her how Shadow Weaver felt about her. Catra was nothing in her eyes when compared to Adora. She'd abandoned her to the whims of Hordak and fled to Adora's side.

Adora.

“ _Didn't need you. Left you.”_

She was the first. She left, and that was the start of Catra's rise and fall. Or, looking back, maybe she'd been falling this entire time. Maybe this was the final moment before she hit the ground. Thoughts of Adora sent an ache down her spine, directionless and suffocating. It brought about a desperate urge to be somewhere, to chase down some unknown goal, but it also placed a weight upon her, pressing her to the floor far more efficiently than the wreckage piled atop Hordak's prone form. It was like drowning deep beneath the sea. A frantic desire to escape, to save oneself, but with the irrefutable knowledge that that is impossible.

_“It’s you. You drive them away, Wildcat.”_

With no recognizable course of action to pursue, and moreover no energy left within her to do so, Catra just sat there, back pressed against a chunk of fallen stone. She tried a few times to say something, to herself or to Hordak, who now seemed to be half-awake, but each time her mouth simply fell open soundlessly, hung there a few moments, and then closed again.

Exhausted and drained, she felt herself approaching unconsciousness herself when a jarringly loud noise shocked her awake. It was the sound of squealing metal and rushing wheels. She opened her half-lidded eyes to see an inexplicable sight before her.

A long, black, compartmented vehicle sat before her, with eerie green lights gleaming out of every window. It was like the monorails that connected a few key areas of the Fright Zone, but the overall design was much different. The oddest thing about its sudden appearance is that there had definitely not been a track there before. The openings in the walls allowing it access to the room were also brand new. Catra had lived in the Fright Zone her whole life, and while admittedly she’d never made a habit of visiting this area, she knew for a fact that there had never at any point been any tracks or transports passing through that sector.

As she puzzled over the train’s sudden appearance, the door in front of her slid open, and a sign lit up above the doorway declaring the destination was simply ‘home.’ Had Catra ever really had a home? The idea seemed more like a feeling than a location in her mind. She wanted to say yes, but she’d never lived anywhere but the Fright Zone, and that had never been anyone’s home.

Feelings of regret, confusion, and nostalgia formed an unusual cocktail in her head as she slowly rose and approached the train’s waiting doorway, almost by instinct. An indistinct memory, like a phantom sensation of touch, brushed the edges of her thoughts. A hand around hers, a warmth beside her.

It all fell away as a sudden surge of light erupted from the darkness within the train, and Catra was gone.

_“And scene.”_

* * *

Adora sat in the now dark and eerily quiet Crystal Castle, the broken pieces of her sword scattered on the ground in front of her. The explosion she’d caused by breaking it was still ringing in her ears. The lights were gone, and so, it seemed, was Light Hope.

The idea that Light Hope might be gone for good evoked a complex medley of emotions in Adora. Sadness, regret, relief, guilt. At the end, Adora had thought Light Hope, the version she knew, was gone, overridden by the First One’s programming. In those final moments, though, her Light Hope, Mara’s Light Hope, seemed to return, if only for a second. Adora didn’t know to what degree Light Hope really felt, how human she had become, but regardless, there was no sense of victory in her defeat. Just a hollow silence where she’d been.

The broken shards of the sword stung her heart as harshly as if they’d pierced it. There was no ambiguity or uncertainty in that feeling. The sword had been the source of her power, the key to her destiny. She-Ra was her. Or, rather, she was She-Ra. Somehow those statements held different meanings in her mind.

At some point, she staggered to her feet, collected the shattered blade pieces in her arms, and began the trek out of the castle. The structure had always been something of a labyrinth, and maneuvering through it in the dark wasn’t a task Adora really felt up for. In spite of that, she continued forward through the pitch black halls, operating on muscle memory alone. It didn’t even really feel like it was her legs that were propelling her forward. She was on autopilot.

The Crystal Castle had, for as long as Adora had known it, been a marvel of First Ones Technology, a stunning maze of confounding design that could generate not only Light Hope's hologram, but everything from simulated giant spiders to recreations of her own memories. Somewhere among the now darkened depths of the structure, Adora had relived a number of painfully nostalgic memories with Catra.

Catra.

The memory felt like it was a lifetime ago. That it was from another version of Adora altogether. The two of them wandering the halls looking for a way out, only to find themselves in one memory after the next. At the time, Adora was still a very recent addition to the rebellion. She'd spent her entire childhood, almost her entire teens, in service of the Horde, only to suddenly be thrown into a life of magic swords and immense responsibility and a feeling of belonging like she'd never really known and a sense of morality that she'd never understood she'd lacked before. She'd felt completely uprooted from everything she'd ever known, but she also felt certain it was the right path.

Catra was the one hitch in that belief. She'd stayed behind. She'd been the one constant in Adora's life and leaving her, even for the best of intentions, had felt like sacrificing a part of herself. Like she'd been so bound to something that pulling away tore off a piece of her and left it there to wither and rot.

For a long time she'd hoped the separation was temporary. Though she refused to acknowledge it consciously, seriously, maybe some part of her still did. And in the maze of illusions and reminiscence, she'd really begun to believe it might happen. Things with Catra were becoming easier, falling into the old comfortable routines she'd once known. There were gentle teases and unrestrained laughs and carefree touches and uninhibited grins.

But then it all fell apart. And perhaps it had never stopped. Maybe it was still collapsing, still breaking apart bit by bit into smaller and smaller pieces, too minuscule and too sharp to ever hope of reconstructing, of even collecting again. Maybe the bond they'd shared would never stop splintering, no matter how irreparable it became. Why else would the thought of Catra still sting so badly?

Scared to continue this line of thought, Adora tried to turn her attention to anything else. She thought back to the recording she'd seen of Mara meeting with Light Hope in the castle. Mara had trained in this same structure so long ago. The technology contained within had lasted for so long until Adora arrived. Now it was broken too. Would the lights ever return? Was this immense computer, all of this First Ones heritage, her heritage, nothing more than an empty tomb now, housing nothing but shadows and a regretful fleeing girl?

Adora tightened her hold on the sword shards in her arms and wondered if breaking things might be all she was good at.

As she continued her departure, she struggled to think of other things. How had the aborted firing of the Heart of Etheria affected her fellow princess? She wasn't really a princess anymore, actually, now that she thought about it. Had the princesses managed to hold back the Horde? Was all this moot, with the whole planet now uprooted and thrown into a new universe? Had Mara's sacrifice ultimately meant nothing in the face of her own failure? What was Adora even good for now? She'd fight, even without the sword. She wouldn't give up. Her friends needed her. Or they needed who she'd been. Could she still help them in the way they needed her to?

Light entered her vision. It was the exit. She raced forward, dropping the sword pieces upon the floor near the doorway in her rush, and as she stepped outside, the cool air provided refreshment that she didn't really feel she deserved.

Glimmering stars, the first she’d ever seen, hung high in the sky above a fleet of sleek, black starships.

The Horde’s reinforcements had arrived.

* * *

Catra woke up feeling cushions against her back. For a fleeting few moments, she wondered if maybe everything that had just happened was a dream. Maybe, just this once, fortune was smiling on her, and the whole fiasco with the Heart of Etheria and the failed attack on Bright Moon had never happened. Maybe she could even wake up to find Adora in the bunk with her, and they’d spend a day doing the usual Horde obligations before sneaking away to watch the sunset and contemplate the days when they would rule the world together.

A pair of annoying voices put that fantasy to rest, however.

“Welcome aboard, new passenger!”

Catra begrudgingly opened her eyes to see a small screen displaying an equally small spherical robot.

“I’m your conductor, One-One.” The second ‘One’ was spoken in a distinctly more morose voice than everything else the bot had just said. “Once you wipe those groggy little peepers, you’ll probably have a _lot_ of questions, like ‘Where am I? Why am I here? Are snacks provided?'”

Catra rolled her eyes, wondering momentarily if the robot was a creation of Entrapta’s, before realizing with a pang of guilt that that wouldn’t be possible with the princess in question left for dead on Beast Island. As the little bot continued its prerecorded message, Catra glanced around to examine her environment.

The cushion she’d felt was a padded seat within a strange egg-shaped pod of some kind. It was high tech, but the overall aesthetic was more sleek and white than the usual clunky, gray and green machines in the Fright Zone or the patchwork look of Entrapta’s usual machines. 

Any ponderings over her transport were immediately pushed aside when Catra saw the environment around her. The whole landscape was made of enormous scoops of ice cream and other confectioneries. Similarly oversized toppings like sprinkles, graham cracker crumbs, and crushed pecans dotted the landscape like foliage. There were roads paved with giant pieces of wafer and a nearby river of a dark brown liquid. Treats like candy and soda weren’t exactly a staple food in the Fright Zone, though she’d long known how to get some contraband, so while Catra had picked up some frame of reference for ice cream and some of the other features around her, she couldn’t identify the liquid comprising the river, which was root beer.

“...this is a train where you sort out your problems.”

That statement shook Catra out of her confusion long enough to refocus her attention on the still playing video.

“How about that number of your hand, huh? Pretty cool and green.” Catra looked down to see that there was indeed a glowing number printed on her right hand. In its more sullen voice, One-One added, “Every passenger has one.”

  1. It was a pretty big number.



“The numbers are made by the train based on your life, in order to help you have the most personalized experience we can offer. If you want to go home, get your number to zero, and _boof_ , away you go.”

Based on her life? Well, if that meant the bad parts of her life, as Catra assumed it did based on the context, then she was a little surprised it wasn’t higher. Just the things she’d gone through over the past few months seemed worthy of a six digit number at least. That said, she wasn’t really sure what she was actually expected to do to make the number go down. She pondered over that for a few moments, One-One’s two voices again fading into the background, before the pressing matter of the ice cream land around her again came to the forefront of her mind.

A few beings began to approach, understandably curious about the new arrival and her odd form of transport. They appeared to be sapient bars of ice and ice cream, with some of them being flavored popsicles and others being ice cream bars coating in a thin skin of chocolate. Their faces were formed by cracks in the chocolate and indentions in the ice, and they had large, rounded popsicle sticks as both arms and legs.

Catra leaped up to respond to the encroaching dessert people, but the ice cream ground proved both colder and more slippery than she anticipated, and she immediately slipped and fell onto her back, ice cream clinging to her hair and clothing.

“Are you okay?” a bright blue popsicle man exclaimed in concern, increasing his stride alongside a few others.

Catra quickly pulled herself off the slick ground and bared her claws in defense. “Stay back! What is this place?”

The approaching treats skidded to a halt in response to the aggressive action.

“No need for that,” said a chocolate bar man with a mature voice and a candy coating that appeared to be emulating a thick beard. “This is our home, Parlor. I’m the governor of this land, Tiger Tail. What’s your name, traveller?”

The man’s gentle demeanor did little to calm Catra. “Is this Etheria?”

Tiger Tail shared a confused glance with his compatriots and responded, “I’ve never heard of that country, I’m afraid. If you’d like, we’re about to have a banquet. You could calm your nerves, and we could see if we can help you work out what to do.”

Confused and uncertain of what to do, Catra simply turned tail and ran in the direction opposite the strange edible people. The crowd’s protests fell on deaf ears as Catra raced on all fours away from them and tried to wrap her head around her unexpected relocation.

The portal had played fast and loose with time and space. That particular experience wasn’t a pleasant thing to reminisce on for Catra, but it seemed a more likely explanation than most. Hordak had even mentioned that Horde Prime would likely open one to pull Etheria out of the empty pocket dimension of Despondos where it was hidden.

The portal’s adverse effects on reality were due to it being opened within Despondos, however, and any portal made from the wider universe by Horde Prime wouldn’t have that issue, right? Not to mention the collapsing portal reality still largely resembled the world Catra was used to, just a little mixed up. Sapient frozen desserts were far from “a little mixed up.”

Some part of Catra wanted to write it all off as a dream, but everything definitely felt real. Freezing cold ice cream was proving to be a poor choice of terrain to be running in with mostly bare feet.

It could perhaps be the result of holograms or some kind of simulation. Catra had reexperienced a few very convincing holographic memories during a previous exploration of the Crystal Castle. The last thing she could recall, however, was being in the Fright Zone. The appearance of the inexplicable train finally resurfaced in her mind, but she only had a moment or two to think about that before she suddenly lost all momentum and was thrown forward onto her back.

Her sprint had been cut short when her left hand collided with a sticky glob of chocolate sauce forming a puddle on the ground. With effort, Catra removed her hand from the pool, her hand now encased in a viscous glove of chocolate.

She shook her arm vigorously, a large portion of the goop flying off to cling to the ground around her. Idly wiping the remaining chocolate off her hand and onto a nearby block of waffle cone, she continued to lay supine on the chilly soil, finding it difficult to build up the energy to pick herself up and continue her mad dash to nowhere in particular.

“Uh, ma’am? Are you okay?”

The speaker was another popsicle person, this one with a light brown coloring. Judging based on their high voice and their smaller than average stature, this one appeared to be a kid.

Catra groaned and placed her hand on her face in exasperation. She wasn’t exactly good with kids. She realized only after doing this that there was still some chocolate on her hand, and now some of it clung to her face. Shaking her head wildly to throw off the stain, she reluctantly responded to the ice cream boy.

“No, walking, talking ice cream boy, I’m pretty far from okay,” she said, pinching the bridge of her nose and then breaking her irritated expression to open her eyes and check that her hand and nose were still clean. “Today has been really, exceptionally not good, and now I’m talking to giant desserts. Honestly, I’d prefer to be back in the Fright Zone, which is sad on several levels.”

The kid leaned down to make eye contact with Catra unobscured by her hand. “The Fright Zone? Is that where you’re from?”

“Yeah. It’s a far cry from this sugary sweet nightmare. It’s not really a ‘home sweet home,’ but it’s familiar, and I’d prefer being in awful there than awful here.”

He sat on the ground by Catra and looked up at the sky contemplatively. “Well, sometimes we get fleshy visitors like you. Never seen one with a tail, though.” Catra wrapped her tail around herself defensively, and the kid’s cheek frosted over in what appeared to be the popsicle person equivalent of blushing. “Sorry! It’s a great tail! I mean, it’s you know, fine. It’s a fine, normal tail.” Catra’s glare intensified to the point the boy worried he might melt from it. “I just, er, yeah the people. They come through with numbers on their hands like yours and they leave through the red door.”

Catra’s ears perked up. “Red door? There’s a way out of here?”

“Yeah, that’s where they usually leave through. I can show you the way. We’ve got to get there by boat, though.”

“You people have boats?” Catra asked skeptically.

The boy pointed a popsicle stick arm to a nearby dock on the root beer river. Sitting there were a few odd aquatic vessels. They seemed to serve the same function as a boat, but they were comprised of large, cherry-topped ice cream scoops piled atop even larger bananas.

Catra rolled her eyes as the annoying cuteness of it all, but minutes later the pair was traveling down the river in one of the floating banana splits. Catra sat in the front, passing the time by nibbling on a cherry larger than her head, while the popsicle boy steered from the back with a rudder that appeared to be at least partially made from a giant cinnamon stick.

“My name’s Butter Brickle, by the by!” the kid said after the silence between them began to approach becoming uncomfortable.

“I didn’t ask,” Catra called back dismissively. After a few more quiet seconds, she added, “...I’m Catra.”

“That’s a nice name,” Butter Brickle said meekly, earning no response from Catra.

The boat sailed down the river in silence again for a few more minutes. Once she lost interest in the cherry she’d been snacking on, Catra tossed the remainder onto the riverbank.

Butter Brickle chimed up again. “So you’re from some place called the Fright Zone? It doesn’t sound like a very nice place. No offense!”

“None taken. The place sucked. Just a cold, steel scab on the land.”

“So, the Fright Zone’s just a town or something?” asked Butter Brickle inquisitively.

“Something like that,” Catra said, dipping her hand into the root beer waters beneath her. “Just one of many points of interest in _the magical world of Etheria_ ,” she added sardonically.

“Huh. Well, what’s Etheria like then? It sounds pretty.”

Catra rolled her eyes. Taking an experimental lick of the root beer dripping from her hand, she said, “It’s not. It’s all just annoying princesses and annoying soldiers and annoying, stupid talking horses.”

“Do you not have any friends there?”

Catra seemed to freeze at the question. After a few moments, she responded, “No. No one cares about me there.” And then, softer, “No one ever did.”

Butter Brickle opened and closed his mouth a few times, struggling to think of a good response to that. He settled on “Well, we could be friends.”

Catra stared down at her own rippling reflection in the river. “You don’t even know me.”

Butter Brickle’s cheeks frosted over again. “I know that. I just don’t really have many friends myself, but the travelers that come through from time to time always seem to like me. I’ve made friends with a couple, but they never come back once they leave.”

Catra looked back at him. “Why would you want to go through that again? Why would you want to be my friend knowing I’m never coming back?”

“It’s really the only way I tend to make friends at all. It’s better than never having any."

“Why don’t the other popsicle people like you?” asked Catra. “They seem like they’d make friends with just about anyone, the saccharine little ice cream headaches.”

“They actually kind of hate me. Most of them.” Butter Brickle looked straight ahead toward their destination, suddenly refusing to make eye contact. “They have good reason to, honestly.

“Some time ago, these kids showed up. Fleshy kids. Travelers. They pillaged one of our towns. They destroyed homes. They attacked people. They… _ate_ people.”

A shiver ran through Butter Brickle. The boat exited the river and entered a lake, with the red door they’d been seeking on a small island in the center. Catra didn’t notice.

“That was my town,” he continued. “My parents tried to distract the invaders so that I could run away, but I was too scared. I hid in my room, and when the travelers knocked the house down, I was pinned under the debris. They never saw me. Eventually, I managed to get myself out. I was the only survivor.

“Now a lot of people hate me for living when they lost their friends, their families. I can’t really blame them, I guess. Now the only people who will be my friends are other travelers. I think they hate me for that too.”

“They didn’t seem to mind me, and I’m a traveler, apparently,” said Catra.

Butter Brickle finally met her gaze again, suddenly looking jarringly serious for his cutesy appearance. “They know they have to make travelers feel at home. At ease. They can’t win a straight fight against people like you.”

The boat landed on the island’s shore, but Catra didn’t notice, realizing after several moments that she’d become frozen in place. After collecting herself, she climbed out of the boat and approached the door. Butter Brickle climbed out as well in order to push the boat back into the root beer lake.

“Hey.”

Butter Brickle turned to see a big cherry flying toward him. He managed to hastily catch it, nearly clumsily dropping it before getting a good grip.

“Don’t take anyone’s crap, Butter Brickle,” said Catra. “You’re better than that. We’re better than that. No one should get to put us down, so don’t believe what they say. You’re alive, and they’re just going to have to deal with that.”

“Thank you!” He glanced down at the cherry and back up at Catra. “So, does this mean we’re friends?”

A look of uncertainty crossed Catra’s face before she turned it to one of determination. She put on a smile and gave a quick nod, then turned to the door. The opening mechanism on it was odd but intuitive, and Catra departed the land of Parlor without another word.

What she found on the other side was unexpected, to say the least. She was on a big train, similar to the one she’d seen in the Fright Zone but much larger and more industrial. The whole land of Parlor was apparently contained within a single train car. Walking to the edge of the platform to get a better look, Catra saw an apparently endlessly long stretch of train cars both ahead of her and behind. The whole massive vehicle charged relentlessly down a barren desert landscape that looked completely foreign to Catra.

“...Huh.”

* * *

“Bow!”

“Stay there! I’m coming!”

Bow fired a zipline arrow toward Glimmer’s location. She was alone in the Black Garnet chamber with Hordak, and he was quickly recovering from the first arrow Bow had fired his way.

A pillar of green light enveloped Glimmer and Hordak, the eerie glow rising skyward like a reversed waterfall. Pieces of the stone floor began to break off of the floor and rise, and then Hordak and Glimmer were likewise ripped from gravity.

“No!” Bow called out, speeding down the zipline with his bow.

The beam of light flashed white for a moment, and then dissipated, taking with it both of its passengers.

In the last moments, Bow sprinted forward in a vain rescue attempt, and he was left to simply stagger to a halt in front of the crater where the floor beneath the pair had been.

He collapsed to his knees under both the weight of what had just happened and of all he’d endured over the past day. This was really his first moment of respite since boarding Mara’s old ship and flying off to Beast Island in direct defiance of Glimmer’s commands. She was suddenly gone and Bow hadn’t even gotten to speak with her. She hadn’t gotten to reunite with her father after his long exile on the island.

Things with Glimmer had been rough for a long time now, and in that moment, all Bow wanted to do was make things right with Glimmer. Save her from the clutches of her captors and hold her close and ensure she was happy and secure and his friend again. All the anger that he’d felt for her lately washed away in that moment, leaving just worry and dread and an assured feeling of love that he hoped he could one day restore in her.

He stared up at the dark, austere spaceships sailing slowly across the sky, seeming to mock him with their apparent indifference to the world below. Glimmer was in one of those ships, presumably, but Bow had no idea which. Even if he did, what would he do? How could he even reach one?

He raised his bow and fired an arrow toward the fleet. There was no point to doing so, and Bow knew this. They would arc back toward the ground long before they could make it to one of the ships, and even if they could, they’d have no effect. Like throwing pebbles at Horde transports, which was a rather on the nose comparison, Bow recognized.

He was just angry, desperate, dumbfounded on what to do. There seemed no right course of action to follow. Glimmer had been taken and there seemed to be nothing in Bow’s power to counteract this at all. This situation was so much bigger than a boy with a bow and arrow could fix.

So he just shot an arrow as if it would send a ship crashing. As if one of the sleek shapes would plummet right out of the sky like a downed bird, and his best friend would stumble out of the wreckage, shaken but safe. Just to vent the frustration boiling inside him.

Then he fired another. And another. And another.

Four arrows flew towards the heavens and then back into the Fright Zone. One had contained a small explosive in the tip and another was a specially constructed sonic arrow, but he was just grabbing and firing at random. Bow neither knew nor cared where they’d land. This place had always been a dead zone of sorts. An unsightly scar of metal and fire in an otherwise beautiful landscape. Bow didn’t know what had stood there before the Fright Zone was constructed either, but anything would have been better, and now whatever it had been was gone, forever, like so much else.

He grabbed a fifth arrow from his quiver, but the heated feelings that had led to his inelegant attempt at emotional catharsis seemed to be ebbing. He brought the arrow down hard against the ground, breaking it in two. The burning sensation in his chest rose to his face, and tears rushed forth from his eyes, drawing clear, wet tracks down his cheeks.

He cried for several minutes. It was all very unrefined, even embarrassing. His voice hitched, and sobs left his throat in desperate, strained gasps. His nose ran. His whole body shook as he bawled, his tears leaving small twin stains on the ground.

He shouldn’t be crying. Intellectually, he knew that. Crying was solving nothing. He needed to stand up and get to work on saving Glimmer. He needed to rise from the floor and find Adora and concoct some way to get to Glimmer, and he needed to get her home and back to her father and her friends and himself.

He knew that. Every conscious part of his brain was screaming at him to stop wasting time and take action. But instead, he just kept crying.

Eventually, after a few minutes passed, the tears began to subside and the sobs began to fade. He stumbled from his place on the floor, on his hands and knees, and over to the Black Garnet.

Once he had finished and caught his breath, he placed a hand on the runestone and lifted himself up onto his feet. Wiping the lingering wetness from his face, he shook off the hopelessness and took his first step out of the Fright Zone.

* * *

Confusion was still the main feeling Catra was processing when she noticed the number on her hand was shifting. Glowing numbers on hands was really weird. Glowing numbers on hands that could change were just wrong. Catra felt that you could ask anyone and they’d agree with that.

3154\. It had decreased by thirteen. Catra was a little curious why it went down by that amount in particular, but moreso she was now determined to make it go down the rest of the way. The weird little bot-ball with the mood swings had said that she could leave when it got to zero, and now she knew what it took to do that.

Getting through a train car made it go down. Catra could do that, easily, as many cars as it took. She just really, really hoped it wouldn’t always go down by such a small amount. Advancing along the walkway bridging Parlor’s car with the next, Catra looked around at the desert landscape around her.

It reminded her a little of the Crimson Waste, though somehow even more desolate. There were no noticeable hills or canyons or rock formations anywhere, just barren, flat land spiderwebbed with shallow cracks.

Catra had once considered claiming a leadership role in the Crimson Waste. She could safely say she had no such aspirations for this strange region.

The red door leading into the next car was entirely identical to the one she had just exited through. Really hoping that there wasn’t another ice cream land on the other side, she spun the opening mechanism and entered.

The interior of the car was, in fact, not made of soft serve. Instead, it was a massive, winding complex of climbing frames and slides and rope bridges and all manner of playground equipment. Catra didn’t really have a frame of reference for structures like these being used for childish enjoyment, but she did have some experience from Horde training. Back then, she’d avoided the exercise when she could and sped through it when she couldn’t. This car would be easy.

She sprinted forward, opting to run atop a long row of monkey bars instead of passing underneath as intended. Across a rope bridge, down a sliding pole, and along a long line of still rings, she ran through it all at breakneck pace.

Next was an area lined with several parallel rows of seesaws. Catra leapt across them like stepping stones, moving so quickly that by the time they shifted under her weight, she was already two ahead.

She noted as she ran that a few of the seesaws were occupied by young animal people. Not in the same way as her, these kids, and they all seemed to be kids, were creatures like dogs and bears and birds, their bodies humanoid but their features still distinctly animalistic. They had paws for hands or wings for arms, floppy ears and long snouts and thick fur or feathers. They all also wore very basic clothing like shirts and shorts and sundresses and caps. Their presence painted a picture of a completely ordinary playground, just a tad larger with fuzzy kids and no adults in sight.

They noticed Catra, unsurprisingly based on her reckless mad dash through their playground, and they tried to call out to her or wave to get her attention, but she refused to slow down or acknowledge their presence.

She needed to get off of the train. She refused to be trapped in this weird land with logic-defying worlds in identical, endless train cars. She had to get back home.

That word again. Home. Did she really have one? She’d lived in the Fright Zone all her life, but as she’d told Butter Brickle, that place didn’t really elicit any warm and fuzzy feelings of belonging. It was a place to return to after hard-fought missions and a place to rest until the next one. It was a place of familiarity, a constant in a world of confounding magic and infuriating princesses. Almost every happy memory she had was from there, but so were almost all of the worst.

She’d sought to claim it, in some sense. In leading the charge to conquer Etheria, to win the war for the Horde, she’d been hoping to claim the throne, steal it right out from under Hordak. That didn’t work out very well for anyone.

As she contemplated all of this, she reached an enormous dome-shaped jungle gym. It was easily the size of a small hill. She sighed at the effort it would require, but began climbing.

Would the Fright Zone even be there when she returned? From the footage Double Trouble had shown her, it seemed the Horde was losing at the end. The final charge to victory had become the final breath of Hordak’s futile attempt at proving himself. Catra knew, even as she so often tried to deny it, that you can’t prove yourself to people like Horde Prime, like Hordak himself. They already know what you are, and no amount of effort will change your core. It’s why Shadow Weaver left. Why her old squadmates left. Why Adora left her.

They saw her, and they knew her.

Catra shook the thoughts from her head. She was going back, no matter what was waiting for her, because it was better than the insanity she was currently experiencing.

As she approached the peak of the hill of metal bars, she saw that the summit was a solid platform rather than the grid that made up the rest of the dome. Spiraling down from the platform were five twisting, tubular slides heading off in different directions. Seeing the slides as an excellent way to make a lot of progress quickly, she hastened her climb and reached the top in less than a minute.

It was there that she saw a young cat girl pacing anxiously in front of one of the slides. Like the other animal children, she wasn’t exactly like Catra. She had a distinctly feline face, with whiskers and a snout. Was it called a snout? Catra, rather ironically, wasn’t sure. The girl was covered head to toe with calico fur, and she wore a pair of denim overalls with a skirt-like bottom over a shirt patterned with thick orange and yellow stripes.

Suddenly feeling somewhat understandably sentimental, Catra approached the young girl. Besides, she was standing right in front of the entrance to the slide she intended to pass through, so it was practical to get her to either go down or get out of the way.

Catra knelt down to look the kitten in the eyes. “Hey there. What’s your name?”

The girl met Catra’s gaze bashfully. “Marmalade.”

Some part of Catra wanted to roll her eyes at that name, but she resisted the urge. “Why are you up here pacing when you could be going down the slide?” There was an undeniably maternal edge creeping into her voice and she _hated_ it.

“Well, all my friends went down already, but I’m scared. It’s a really big slide.” Embarrassed, her eyes shifted to look at the ground and she squeezed tight handfuls of her overalls.

Catra placed a hand on Marmalade’s shoulder. “I know a secret, okay? How to get over your fears and do things you don’t think you can.”

“What is it?”

“First you close your eyes,” began Catra, and Marmalade did just that.

“Then you take a deep breath.” Marmalade obeyed, taking a comically large breath.

“And then…” Catra continued, tightening her grip on Marmalade’s shoulder. “You do it.”

With one quick movement, she shoved the young girl into the slide. Marmalade’s shocked scream grew steadily quieter as she slid further and further away. After taking just a moment to smile with satisfaction, Catra leapt in after her.

The slide’s wild, winding design twisted so severely in different directions that it had to be defying basic laws of physics. There were corkscrews and a repeated series of ups and downs, and Catra was certain she was upside-down for at least fifteen seconds at one point.

The whole experience was exhilarating, and oddly freeing. For Catra, it wasn’t exercise or Horde training, it was just a moment of unrestrained enjoyment, thrown to and fro without a care. After what felt like a dreadfully short amount of time, she emerged at the other end of the slide in an area filled with merry-go-rounds.

She realized that at some point she’d started laughing. It took her a few moments to calm down enough to properly observe her surroundings. 

The merry-go-rounds were all painted in vibrant colors and patterns, three to each and with no repeating paint jobs that she could see. Off to the right was a sand box large enough that it could easily qualify as a beach if not for the lack of an adjacent ocean. To the left was a forest of tetherball poles. Directly ahead was one last jungle gym, this one such a tangled mass of colorful metal bars that she wasn’t sure that she could get through them. Barely visible through the spaces between however, was the red door leading out of the car.

All of these observations meant little, however, in the face of what was right in front of her.

Marmalade was lying on the ground, sobbing, and clutching her shoulder. There were visible scrapes on that shoulder as well as on her right knee. One of the straps on her overalls had torn and was hanging limply in two pieces.

The worst part, though, were the deep claw marks she saw on both of Marmalade’s upper arms. They appeared to be from clutching her arms tightly as she went down the slide. Catra knew that pain. The scars beneath her clothes seemed to itch, but Catra kept her hands at her sides, balled into fists.

A young dog boy was knelt beside her, hovering his hands over his shoulders like he was afraid she would break on contact. He was a Shiba Inu, though Catra didn’t know that, and he wore a slightly too large red hoodie. While Marmalade was too busy crying to notice her, the dog boy spotted her immediately and glared daggers at her.

“Hey!” 

The speaker was the other kid present, a raccoon boy who appeared to be just slightly older than the other two, just on the verge of being a teenager. He wore a knit cap and what appeared to be a black crop top, which seemed like a rather odd fashion choice. After another glance at Marmalade, Catra realized that the black strip of fabric that the dog was using to gingerly bandage her knee was likely ripped from that shirt.

“What’s your problem?” the raccoon demanded.

“Mochi, p-please…” Marmalade managed to gasp out between sobs.

“No!” said Mochi, approaching Catra with a furious expression on his face. “Who goes around hurting little kids? What is wrong with you?”

The dog boy began to stand but Mochi demanded he too stay out of it. The dog, apparently named Rascal, relented and sat back down, worry apparent in his expression.

“I just pushed her down a slide!” said Catra. “It’s not my fault she was too scared to do it herself. If I hadn’t done it, she’d still be up there. Did you not want her around or something?”

Mochi shoved Catra, a furious but ineffective gesture. “That is _so_ _far_ from the problem! You hurt her! Like, actually shoved her and hurt her! She was scared to slide down and now she’s even more scared of you!”

“I helped her!” retorted Catra, her voice rising in intensity. “I don’t have to defend myself to little brats like you. You don’t learn by whining and standing in place. You do things! You take action. This is what she needed, and it’s not my fault she was too weak.”

“Y-you seemed n-nice,” Marmalade stammered out, tears still streaming down her face. “You could’ve just t-t-talked to me. Y-you could’ve j-just left me alone. Why’d you do it?”

It felt like ice water was poured on the hot anger in Catra’s chest. She ran toward the exit, shoving Mochi to the ground as she sped past. Mochi punched the ground in anger, several times. Marmalade tried to stand but stumbled back to the ground. Rascal rushed to Mochi’s side, giving him a worried hug and examining his bloodied knuckles with panicked concern. Catra saw none of this.

She ran full speed to the cluster of multicolored metal poles and began to squeeze her way through as quickly as she could.

What was up with those kids? Did they not know how the world worked at all? You can’t just stand still. You can’t just sit scared or break down crying. You get to work. You do what scares you, or what hurts you, and you lick your wounds and you keep going. Catra knew that. Did these kids know nothing? Maybe they really didn’t have parents. Shadow Weaver was anything but a mom, but at least she taught Catra how to survive in the world.

As Catra forced her way through the bars, she realized the number on her hand was changing again. She hadn’t made it through the car yet, though. She paused to examine it and saw the number was 3162. It had gone back up! It was practically back where it started.

She hadn’t even left the car! Was there a time limit? How was this number personalized, and how was this fair at all? This number was just too big!

She let out an angry roar and tore through the impeding bars with her claws, ripping her way through to the other side. Once she was free from the web of steel, she ran straight to the exit and departed without even a glance back.

* * *

“Take him to be reconditioned.”

Horde Prime’s identical clones complied immediately with their progenitor’s orders and carried Hordak’s limp form out of the spacious throne room. That left Glimmer alone with Prime.

“But, I have been rude,” Horde Prime said, turning his attention to her.

The statement sounded just sincere enough to be infuriating. If Glimmer didn’t feel so terrified in that moment, she would probably have sent a harsh insult his way. As it was, however, she had no magic and no allies and this whole ship and everyone within was his. Was _him_.

“We have a guest. Royalty, if I’m not mistaken.”

There was a pleasant, charismatic charm to his voice. It was almost as if he hadn’t furiously scolded and assaulted Hordak not moments before.

He stepped forward and chivalrously leant down to offer her assistance. She reluctantly took his hand in hers and he lifted her gently to her feet.

“I apologize for my little brother,” he continued. “His actions are an embarrassment. I desire only peace and order.”

Glimmer allowed the faintest trace of hope to return. “Then, you’ll leave us alone?”

Horde Prime chuckled humorlessly. “Oh, no, child. I cannot let word spread of my brother’s botched conquest. For order to thrive, this whole mess must be wiped away.”

Glimmer tried to step backward in retreat, but Prime, undeterred, reached out to place a hand softly onto her cheek. “Beginning with you.”

Glimmer reacted impulsively, seeing little alternative. Her right hand shot forward, faint traces of lingering magic sparking from her fist. She’d hoped for a blast of magic, but so far from the runestone and drained by the near firing of the Heart of Etheria, she was cut off from her power supply.

Her pitiable attack collided with Horde Prime’s toned chest. It felt hard under her fist, like striking a wall. His reaction suited this comparison, as his expression betrayed no emotion. Her fruitless attempt at a magical blast instead amounted to a thoroughly unremarkable punch.

Despite the complete lack of a visible reaction on Prime’s face, his response was immediate and decisive. He grabbed her roughly by the arm and spun her forcibly in place, turning her to face the viewing screens behind his throne. His other hand wrapped around her throat, the metal claw worn on his index finger cutting a short, shallow line across her neck.

“Poor girl,” he cooed, still not a single trace of anger in his voice. “I know you’re surely a person of high stature on your lost little world, but you’re in my universe now. You’ll find I can be a rather excellent host, but I simply cannot allow such brazen acts of rebellion. It will not do.”

A thin trickle of blood slid down Glimmer’s neck from the cut Prime had made, and a soft stream of tears slid down her face, partially from fear and partially from the stinging pain. Horde Prime leaned forward to put his face next to hers, nearly resting his head upon her shoulder. The prehensile metal tendrils mimicking hair upon his head emerged again from their holders on his chest and writhed slowly around her head, the needlepoints on the end of each aimed threateningly at her face.

The screens behind his throne displayed an image of the planet of Etheria. In her peripheral vision, Glimmer saw him gesture toward it with a small nod.

“If you would humor me for a moment, _Your Grace_.” The mocking sincerity appeared again in his voice. “This hidden jewel of a planet has been giving off some rather unique readings. It’s unlike anything I have ever seen, and I have seen much. Could you explain what makes your world so unique?”

Glimmer defiantly shook her head, the close proximity of the needles around her requiring the gesture be barely perceptible. Prime clicked his tongue in disappointment.

“Are you sure there is nothing you can tell me?”

One of the needles maneuvered itself centimeters away from her left eye. Glimmer could feel sweat beading on her forehead. Unable to shift her head away, she shut her eyes tight. The needle edged closer and deftly sliced a shallow nick on her eyelid.

Despite everything in her screaming to remain silent, Glimmer spoke up. “It’s a weapon!”

The needles backed away and reinserted themselves into their slots on Prime’s chest. The hand around Glimmer’s throat remained in place, and she sighed in defeat.

“The Heart of Etheria,” she explained despite herself. “The whole planet is a giant First Ones weapon.” She heard a soft hum of recognition from Prime. “It’s extremely powerful. It almost broke the planet apart.”

Hoping to salvage some good from her weakness, she hastily added, “And you need me! And the other princesses on our world. It doesn’t work without us.”

Prime replied simply, “Well, you have certainly given me a lot to think about.”

He whisked her around by her arm like a twisted parody of a partner dance move and handed her off to a pair of Horde clones that had apparently entered the room during that tense interrogation. As they escorted her out of the room, Horde Prime took a seat on his throne and called out after her, still in that confident, unfazed voice.

“I hope the accommodations are to your liking, child. We will have much to discuss. You and your fellow royals will prove helpful in cultivating peace and order throughout the universe, I assure you.”

Once she was gone, he spun his throne around to once again face the image of Etheria.

“The First Ones. I can never seem to be rid of you, can I? Oh if you could know the power that you’ve so carelessly placed in my hands. Your misguided attempts at rebellion will now be the instrument with which I will fill this vast darkness with cleansing light.”

* * *

Catra made it through the next few cars as quickly as she possibly could, fearful of a potential, unknown time limit.

The next car contained a frog civilization living atop giant lily pads in a big swamp. They lived in huts and were in the middle of a potluck when Catra arrived, but she had no time for it. The exit door was on the other side of a long stretch of swamp water with no bridges or lily pads to cross. Catra had managed to convince a tall frog girl to give her a ride across the pond. Catra knew how to use people.

The following car contained a world of nothing but shrimp. It was a tasty detour, but she grew tired of it quickly.

The fifth car overall contained a desert town populated with cactus people. The whole experience reminded Catra far too much of her brief journey to the Crimson Waste. She really didn’t like being reminded of that. The cactus cowboys were also really touchy for such literally prickly people, so Catra left that car in a hurry as well. It would have been even faster, but she refused to ride a cactus horse.

The car after that contained a large, metropolitan city. The one noticeably odd feature was that nearly every inhabitant of the city was a life-sized, extremely realistic looking plastic model of a person. They were all of distinctly varied races, ages, and fashion styles, and they were all in distinct poses. It was a very impressive degree of attention to detail. The sole actual, living inhabitant was a little unsettling and clingy though, so Catra again found good reason to depart post haste.

Four more cars down and her number hadn’t changed at all. It didn’t go up, and it didn’t go down. Catra was on the verge of another angry scream. She’d gone through the cars very quickly, and she’d made a lot of progress, so why wasn’t her number changing? Her passage through Parlor had been rather leisurely, and yet her number had gone down. In contrast, she’d passed through the jungle gym car as fast as she could manage, yet it had increased.

She was pondering this as she entered the next car. Lucky number seven, hopefully. The interior was all molded from a dark brown substance, including the plant life, the rocks, and the ground. The ground in particular was made from a uniform grid of rectangular blocks.

Catra reached down as scratched off a small piece of the ground. She sniffed it and didn’t recognize it immediately. She gave it a hesitant lick and then gagged at the taste. It was dark chocolate. She hated chocolate in all forms, but dark chocolate in particular was revoltingly bitter.

Catra sighed at the stomach-turning scenery and began her trek for the door. As she passed a chocolate tree she broke off a limb and started idly snapping off tiny chunks as she walked, leaving a trail of crumbs for no reason beyond boredom. After a few minutes of walking, having completely broken apart the branch, she started looking around at the inedible environment.

She noticed that off in the distance, the color of the chocolate changed to a creamy white. She wasn’t particularly interested in the reasons for this, but she nonetheless had little opportunity to think about it, due to the arrival of a pair of rabbit people. 

One was the same dark brown as the ground she stood on and the other was a rich pink color. They were more akin to Catra than the animal people of the jungle gym car. They mostly resembled humans, save for the long ears, the cottontails, and the whiskers. They were also dressed in identical suits and bowties, the material made of the same chocolate as their bodies, which was a little unsettling if Catra was being honest.

“Hello, visitor!” the dark chocolate bunny began. “Welcome to our land! I’m Carmen, and this is Valero.”

They both waited expectantly, and after a moment Catra replied with a mumbled “Catra.”

The pink bunny, Valero, clapped his hands excitedly. “It’s so nice to have a new visitor. We don’t have many meat visitors like you, and now we have two!” Both of the rabbits had a somewhat thick accent, though Catra didn’t have any way of identifying them as Spanish.

"Meat visitors" was a really discomforting way to phrase things, but that wasn’t the part that interested Catra. “Wait, so there’s another passenger here?”

“Passenger? You mean our other visitor?” said Valero. “Oh you just have to meet him. He’s our new hero. He brought peace to our land.”

Valero and Carmen began to walk and Catra followed after them. “Peace? So, what, was there a war or something?”

“Oh, we don’t like to talk about that. It was a bad time, but then our hero arrived, and everyone is at peace,” Carmen said, just as enthusiastically as before.

“Sounds like a real lionheart, this guy,” Catra said, a familiar face in her mind’s eye.

The walk to the village in the center of the land was spent listening to her guides extol the virtues of this heroic arrival. Upon entering the village, Catra came to realize the whole land within the car was divided into four equal sections, each a different color of chocolate: light brown, dark brown, white, and pink. At the very center of town, the four sections met at a perfect intersection of four corners.

The village itself was filled with booths selling food and souvenirs and dancing and singing rabbits and plentiful decorations, also made entirely of chocolate. Carmen explained it was a festival in celebration of peace and the unification of their land. Catra remained on high alert, remembering the true nature of the banquet offered to her by Tiger Tail.

“And this our hero!” announced Valero.

A young human man who’d been talking to a trio of bunny children broke away to greet Catra. He had a head of thick curly hair and a pink jacket that she immediately disliked because it brought Glimmer to mind. Upon meeting eyes with Catra, his expression immediately changed to one of amazement.

“Oh my gosh! Are you a catgirl?” he said excitedly.

Catra raised her hands up in defense. “Okay, that’s way too much energy.”

The boy blushed and placed a hand in his hair in embarrassment. “Sorry, you’re just like a kitten. It’s cute.”

Catra blushed as well. “Okay, again, _way_ too much.”

The boy noticed the glowing number on Catra’s palm. “Oh! Are you a passenger too?”

He held up his hand, and a number shone on it as well. 1911.

He reached his arm out, offering a handshake. “Sorry about that. Hey there.”

Catra rolled her eyes but accepted the handshake. “Hey. Catra.”

A barely restrained chuckle made his amusement over her name apparent despite his best attempt. “I’m Steven Universe. Nice to meet you.”


	2. The Floor is Lava Car

“I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.”

 **―** **Mark Twain**

Glimmer jolted awake from another anxious nightmare, as always almost frustratingly disconnected from her current troubles. Her nightmares had never been particularly relevant to the major things troubling her in her waking life, and she’d held a minor personal grievance against that. There was no poignant symbolism or prophetic visions. It was all of the fear and the anxiety with none of the grandeur.

Upon waking she lay still in her hard bed, her eyes remaining closed. Once she opened them the reality of her situation would be unavoidable, so for a few minutes she remained on the cold slab of a bed, unmoving and unseeing, maintaining the fragile lie she so hoped could be true.

Eventually, though, she had to open her eyes, and the sight of her cell was waiting for her. The spaciousness, the large bed, and the bright white color pervasive throughout Horde Prime’s ship all gave the illusion of hospitality. The sparsity of the decor, consisting only of the solid, unadorned bed, a single shelf, and a chair, as well as the bright green force field trapping her inside ruined that surface level impression easily.

Sitting up in her bed, she sighed and tried to produce her typical light-based magic with her hand. It had become a ritual, though a pointless one this far from the Moonstone. Not even the tiniest pink fleck emerged from her fingertips. 

For a long time, before the loss of her mother, she had to share the power of the Moonstone with her. Her powers at that time were limited. She could only teleport so far and so many times. She’d still held her own in battles despite those limitations. She wondered now, feeling totally helpless for the first time in a long while, if her empowerment by the Moonstone had actually weakened her. Had she become reliant on magic? Would she have once been able to hold her own on this ship even without mystical powers?

Though, as she dwelt on the subject she realized that her separation from the Moonstone wasn’t wholly responsible for her current disadvantage. She drew a circle in her air with her outstretched hand, attempting to create a magic circle, but no symbol appeared. Nothing at all happened. There was absolutely no magic in the air. It was sterile, stale. There was something Glimmer had always felt as essential and yet never consciously recognized that was now missing. Its absence left a hollow sensation. It was like an environment devoid of both heat and cold or an atmosphere that sustained but provided nothing and offered no nourishment.

Just one more thing to make her feel alone.

Eventually, with nothing else to do, she climbed off of her bed. Being on her feet gave her little motivation, however, since she was still trapped in a nearly empty room with nothing to distract her from her imprisonment.

After some time spent rocking back and forth on her heels, she tried sitting down in the simple chair provided to her. Just like when she’d sat in it on her arrival to the room, it was hard and uncomfortable. Sitting in it was almost a chore in itself, requiring deliberate effort and tolerance. She tried sitting on it in a number of positions, and then moved on to try sitting and reclining on the shelf, the floor, the bed again. It was all unyielding and discomforting. It felt as if she was being forced to stand without break for a rather extended amount of time. No matter what she did, there was no comfort or rest.

Eventually she settled on sitting in the corner, leaned against the wall in the fetal position, legs held against her chest by interlocked arms. Idly, she picked at her bandages. After Horde Prime’s cruel interrogation in the throne room, he’d arranged for one of his innumerable identical servants to tend to the wounds he himself had caused. The treatment had been all tender touches and cautious movements, the same sharp-edged sincerity that Prime seemed to show her at all times. Simple white bandages were now wrapped around her neck and affixed over her damaged eyelid, leaving her only able to see out of one eye for the time being. She very much wanted to remove the obstruction but feared lasting injury if she did so.

She was still sitting there, gingerly picking at the edges of the bandage lining her throat, when the green force field serving as mirror and cell door dissipated, revealing a Horde clone waiting on the other side. He motioned for her to follow him with a wave of his hand, the motion slightly unnerving from it’s precision and control, as if he were a drone rather than a person. And Glimmer reluctantly rose to accompany him, she noted that that was an unfortunately accurate assessment.

Horde Prime’s primary ship, the Velvet Glove, as it was apparently known, had truly bewildering architecture. The many uniform hallways weaved to and fro through the expansive structure, forking off in different directions and suddenly ending in abrupt dead ends and continuing on for long stretches with no connected rooms. Glimmer could not make heads or tails of how anyone was expected to maneuver through it all. In spite of this, the clone escorted her toward their destination without a hint of hesitance or confusion. With every twist and turn, he walked forward with an unflinching sense of purpose.

After minutes of trying and failing to memorize the route or deduce some hint of signage or other means of navigating the halls, Glimmer unexpectedly ran right into her guide, thanks to his sudden halting. Failing to react in any way to the awkward collision, he turned and walked into an open doorway. Smoothing the creases in her clothing, Glimmer delayed in front of the door for just a moment to steel her nerves, and then followed him inside.

The interior appeared to be a dining room, with a long table dominating the room. The table was topped with an assortment of bizarre alien foods, including gelatin-like desserts (Glimmer assumed they were desserts) and unfamiliar fruits and meats. 

Despite the imposing length of the table, there were only two chairs, one at each of the narrow ends. The chair near the doorway was empty, presumably intended for Glimmer. The other, notably more ornate and tall, was currently occupied by Horde Prime himself, waiting patiently for her to sit while another clone served him a plate of what appeared to be some variety of shellfish.

“Greetings, Your Majesty,” began Prime cordially. “Come, sit, eat. We have so much to discuss.”

* * *

“‘Steven _Universe_ ’? There’s no way that’s a real name.”

Steven smirked at Catra, unfazed by the comment. “My dad had his name changed to ‘Universe’ as part of his rock star persona. It kinda stuck.” His tone was casual, though his expression was oddly somber for a moment as he said that.

Catra scoffed. “So he’s some musician?”

“Was, but yeah. Most people think that’s pretty cool.” Steven performed a flourish of air guitar before turning to find somewhere to sit. “Also, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that you’re questioning my name when you’re a cat named ‘Catra’?”

“Hey, my name is awesome.” she protested, crossing her arms. “Don’t make fun of it.”

Steven sat down on a long milk chocolate bench. “Oh no, it is a really cool name. I was just pointing out the irony.”

Eyes turned down and ears turned back, Catra walked over and sat on the other end of the bench, replying “Okay then. Thanks, I guess.”

The two sat in silence for some time, Steven fishing a half-eaten pink chocolate ball from a backpack and idly eating some to pass the time. All around them, the festival continued in earnest, though it just annoyed Catra and seemed to make Steven feel embarrassed. After a young white chocolate bunny girl, apparently named Paz, approached Steven and thanked him for some vague good deed, Catra spoke up.

“So, what’s the deal with this car? And why is everyone treating you like the hero of the hour?”

“Well, I don’t know if cars have official names or anything, and the people here haven’t really managed to agree on a name of their own either, but I’ve just kinda been calling it ‘the Chocolate Car,’ I guess. It’s like the eighth one I’ve been in, I think? It was kinda going through some bad times when I got here so I decided to help out.”

“What was going on?” asked Catra.

“Well, there was sort of a war going on, between the four kinds of chocolate.”

“Whoa, whoa,” interjected Catra. "You ended a war? How long have you been here?”

“Uh,” Steven began, blushing slightly. “I guess a week? Maybe six days.”

Catra balked at this. “You ended a war in a week?”

It seemed simultaneously a very long time to spend in one car and an extremely short time to end a war.

“Yeah, I know war’s usually not that simple, by far,” explained Steven, earning a mumbled agreement from Catra. “I think things on the train are supposed to be a little easier though. Like puzzles and quests.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? What’s the point of all of this?”

“Well, supposedly it’s supposed to fix our problems, right? Our personal issues and anxieties and everything? That’s what One-One said.”

“Who’s One-One?” asked Catra.

“You know, the little round robot in the introduction video to the train,” Steven clarified, miming a sphere with his hands. “With the two personalities.”

“Oh that guy,” Catra said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I was a little distracted at the time. Rightfully so, I’d say. He just said our number was based on our lives, right? He didn’t really say how to get it down to zero, just that that’s how you leave.”

The pair both paused to look at the numbers on their palms before Steven responded. “Well, I don’t know if I heard say more than you did or if I’m just guessing, but it sounded like the number is based on our personal problems, and the train is supposed to help us get over them or deal with them or…”

“How is a train full of weird, random worlds supposed to help us deal with our personal problems?” Catra asked, breaking off a chunk of the chocolate bench below her and presenting it as proof of the absurdity of their situation.

Steven shrugged. “I mean, I kinda have some experience in war, so…”

“Well, so do I!” interjected Catra. “But when I got here it was already over. And why would it help for them to be chocolate rabbit people?”

Steven arose briefly to take the broken chunk of chocolate from Catra, lick the damaged side, and stick it back where it had been. Catra was seriously grossed out by the act, but as she idly felt the returned corner, she couldn’t feel any seams, so it had apparently been an effective means of repair. Nonetheless, she scooted a few inches away from it, moving her closer to her fellow passenger. There was still at least three feet of distance between them, but based on how isolated she’d felt as of late, the closeness felt odd and very noticeable to her.

“Well, first off, I’m sorry that you’ve had to go through that. Seriously. If you wanna talk about it, I’m here.” Catra’s expression in response to that made that clear that was an opportunity she wouldn’t be taking. ”But as for the train, I think maybe the randomness is the point? Like, if it’s random, then eventually you’ll have a little of everything so everyone will find something that fits for them.

“When I got on the train, I made a mad dash through the first several cars. I knew that wasn’t what I was supposed to do, and I knew I wasn’t about to stumble upon an exit that way, but I was a mess when I got here. But then I ended up here and I just knew I had to help them out and stop the fighting, so I stopped running and set to work. I might have stayed here for a little longer than I was supposed to, but I just had to help these guys.”

“So, yeah. How did you end a war in a week?” asked Catra. Then, sarcastically, “Positive energy and the power of friendship?”

Steven gave another small shrug. “Kinda, in part. Also some reconstruction, halting a few battles, saving some bystanders. It was a process.”

“Oh, wow,” Catra said, her smug attitude falling away.

“When I got here, all four kinds of chocolate were in a civil war. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, and, er, ruby chocolate.” Catra noticed a little hitch in his voice at the end of that statement, but didn’t have the context needed to understand it. “But now they’re all working together now. Hopefully they’ll take this progress and run with it.

The ruby chocolate rabbit Catra had met, Valero, ran up, a dark chocolate rose tucked beside one of his tall ears. He greeted Steven warmly and offered him a chocolate bar, which Steven attempted to politely decline. After Valero insisted, Steven took it, only to present it to Catra once Valero was gone again.

Catra held up her hands and stuck out her tongue in disgust. “No thanks. Not a chocolate person.”

“Alright. Oh, have you eaten anything lately, actually? This place only has the one food.”

Catra shook her head, so Steven set the chocolate bar down on the bench and pulled his nearby backpack off the ground and set it on his lap. After some digging around in the bag, he found what he was looking for. He presented them, two bags containing stacks of small pancakes, to Catra, who accepted without much protest. The pancakes all had brown moose head-shaped patterns on their centers, and they tasted like sweet maple syrup.

“They’re from Malik’s gift shop,” Steven said as Catra scarfed down the little discs of dough. “Obviously,” he added, holding up the bag to show it had a similar moose motif.

“Who’s Malik?” Catra asked between bites.

“Malik? The moose comedian? His material isn’t that good, but his gift shop made for a good supply run.” To demonstrate his point, Steven pulled out a bag of toothbrushes and a snow cap, both with the same moose-centric designs. “His comedy club was in the car before this, so I figured you knew of him. Maybe they had a guest performer while you were there?”

Catra paused eating to respond. “Uh, the car before this was like a city of model people. Well, mostly model people.”

“What?” Steven glanced back in the direction of the car’s entrance. “Give me a second.”

Steven rushed off toward the door, stopping a few times to assure some of his adoring fans that he’d be returning right away. Catra happily chowed down on her little pancakes while Steven was away. A white chocolate rabbit woman tried to sit down beside her, but a quick but intense glare was enough to scare her off. In less time than Catra thought it would take, Steven returned, now looking tense.

“Okay, that was definitely not the same car I remember,” he said. “Can cars change? Are they different every time? No, because it was a city like you said, and this car is still chocolate. Maybe they move sometimes or something? Or change after a certain period, or if no one’s been in them for a while?”

Catra finished the last miniature pancake and tossed the crumpled clear plastic wrappers away without a thought. “You’re freaking out over nothing, dude. What does it matter, anyway? You’re just going to keep moving forward. What does it matter if the cars you leave change?”

Steven sat back down and looked glumly into the backpack he’d left on the bench. “I just tried really hard to make sure things could be better for these guys, and I don’t want it to all just reset into a pirate ship or a bounce house or something.”

Catra stood and hesitantly placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “Hey, I think it’s fine. I heard an ice cream kid a few cars back talk about some damage a group of passengers caused a good while ago. I don’t think cars reset here. Maybe the order just shifts around sometimes.”

Pulling her hand away and hoping that that was all the encouragement he needed, as that was all she had to give, Catra started walking away in the direction opposite the entrance door.

“Are you going?” Steven called after her.

“Yeah, I didn’t really plan on sticking around.” Catra called back without turning her head. “Especially since it seems any ‘character building’ potential in this car has already been spent.”

“Hold on! I’m going with.”

Catra sighed impatiently and turned on the spot. “I don’t remember inviting you.”

“Well, there’s only one direction to go, so it’s either go with you or awkwardly follow you. Besides, two heads are better than one, and I’d honestly rather have a familiar face on this journey.”

“You just met me!” Catra said in exasperation.

“Yeah, exactly,” Steven said, double checking the contents of his backpack. “You haven’t even told me why you’re a catgirl or anything. We can’t split up yet.”

“I just am,” Catra said. “Why aren’t you a catboy?”

“Good one,” Steven replied sincerely. “So, can I come with?”

“Sure,” Catra responded, throwing her arms up in defeat. “But I’m not waiting around for you so you’d better keep up.”

Steven placed the backpack on his shoulders and started to follow Catra, only to be stopped by a short ruby chocolate bunny boy, looking to be around twelve years old, maybe thirteen at the oldest. He tugged at Steven’s jacket sleeve and then shyly asked, “Are you leaving already, Steven?”

Steven knelt down to match the boy’s height and replied “Sorry, Nico, I’ve gotta go. You know I was only going to be around for a little bit, right?”

“Right,” the boy said glumly.

Too shy to look Steven in the eyes, he hastily shoved a chocolate heart into his hand and then ran off into the festival crowd. Steven examined the heart with a smile, turning it over in his hands. It was all four kinds of chocolate, pieced together in a pattern meant to evoke a patchwork quilt or perhaps a jigsaw puzzle. It also seemed to have a gooey center, though without eating it, Steven couldn’t tell if that was a similar mix of chocolates.

Steven formed a bubble around the heart with his powers and placed it into his backpack. Catra, trying to fend off another female admirer with a harsh look, didn’t see his display of Gem powers and didn’t redirect her attention to him until he’d made his way to her.

“So, who was that kid?” Catra enquired as the pair headed toward the exit, Catra leading by a few paces.

“That was Nico. He got hurt a while back when a group of white chocolate bunnies attacked his neighborhood. I helped him out and got him healed up, and he kinda developed a little crush on me, I think. He’s a good kid. I hope he’s not too torn up by my leaving.”

“Who cares,” said Catra. “It’s just some precocious childhood crush.”

“Well, yeah,” Steven said, looking back at the village now slowly sinking into the distance. “Those crushes matter, though. It doesn’t matter if he’s going to get over it. He’s sad now.”

Catra grumbled something indistinct and then didn’t speak again until she and Steven had left the car.

* * *

As she finally fell asleep, Adora’s uneasy breaths turned soft and steady. Bow stood guard a few feet away in the center of the tent, watching for any potential disturbances to Adora’s sleep. She’d been running herself ragged the past few days, determined to rescue Glimmer and fend off Horde Prime’s forces. After she’d finally lost consciousness hours previously, Bow had insisted she get some rest. The presence of the other members of the Rebellion had proven frustratingly unconducive to any sleep on Adora’s part, so Bow banished them all from the tent and elected himself sentry.

Now that she seemed to have managed to fall into a more comfortable unconsciousness, Bow himself could relax a bit. He collapsed onto one of the bean bag chairs in the corner of the tent, falling perhaps a bit too eagerly. He rolled backwards onto his head, his legs flaying skyward, and had to awkwardly pull himself back up into a normal seating position, blushing despite the total lack of an audience.

He continued to watch for unwanted visitors for a few minutes, before deciding to allow himself some time for sleep. Despite that resolution, he soon discovered that rest wasn’t going to come easily, no matter how badly he needed it. His mind was racing and his nerves wouldn’t settle.

With few other options to pass the time, he decided to talk some things out with Adora. She was completely asleep and he was speaking softly so as not to wake her, so really he was speaking toward her more than speaking with her, but really he didn’t feel brave enough to actually say what he wanted to with a conscious person.

“Hey Adora, we’re going to get Glimmer back, right? I mean, I know we’re trying, and I know you won’t give up, but she’s in space. And we don’t know where, and we’re facing an army, and, and―”

A lone tear escaped his eye and flowed slowly down his cheek. Glancing up to make sure Adora was still asleep, he reached into his bag and pulled out one piece of the arrow he'd broken in the Fright Zone. He examined the damage, eager for something to focus on as he spoke, now even a little quieter than before.

“There’s something I haven’t talked about with anyone, even Glimmer. I really should have, but I never could bring myself to mention it.”

He sighed and looked around the room one more time before continuing.

“Do you remember what it was like after Catra activated that portal? I mean, obviously you remember that, but do you remember what it was like actually living in that? Time and space were all jumbled, and things kept disappearing. And after it did, everything would shift a little, and it would be like those things never existed.

“I don’t know if everyone remembers what it was like there. No one really mentions it. I can see why. I mean, that’s where Angella… You know. I figure it’s probably a tougher memory for Glimmer than most anyone else, which is why I can never talk about it with her.

“Or it’s one reason, I guess. You see, I remember everything that happened there. Or, I guess, I remember what I remembered there. The portal wasn’t really active for that long. It was messing with history and with the world, but I don’t know if we really lived those lives. I can remember, after the Fright Zone and the Horde got erased, growing up in an Etheria that had never been invaded. There was no Horde, and so there was no Rebellion, and so I never joined it. I was researcher Bow with books instead of arrows, but I was still Glimmer’s best friend. That’s the me you met then and the me who helped you with shutting down the portal. I didn’t make it to the end, though, but now I remember everything right up until I got erased too, even after history kept changing.

“I can remember Princess Prom in a timeline where there was no Horde and we’d never met. Glimmer and I went together. I hadn’t really gotten to know Perfuma because there wasn’t a big wartime Princess Alliance and I hadn’t gone with you to bring everyone together. So, unlike what actually happened, I went with Glimmer. It was still in the Kingdom of Snows, and it was really fun. We danced and ate way too much party food and probably made way more noise than we should have. There was no arguing and no Catra and no kidnapping.

“And then, right at the end, we were sitting off to the side and talking. We were exhausted from dancing and the party was going to end soon and it had all been so great. And then, Glimmer kissed me. It was just a brief little kiss, and then she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. I don’t think I even really reacted to it. I just sat there, probably wide-eyed and red-faced. We just sat like that for a while, and then the party ended, so I woke her, and we left, and that was that. We never really talked about it again, but things were just a little different from then on. I was really aware of my hands whenever she was around. The tone of her voice seemed a little different when we talked. Things like that. But otherwise, everything just went on as normal.

“And now, with Glimmer so far away, I guess I’m getting introspective or something, but I think about that a lot. Did it really happen? Did the portal really alter history or just our memories? Would it matter if it was history if that timeline got erased anyway? Does she remember it? Did this big moment happen and we just pretended it never happened?

“And now she’s gone and in danger, and we had that big fight, and she activated the Heart, and― I was so mad when we left, and then I saw her get abducted, and all that anger turned to worry and regret, but sometimes when I think about it all I get so mad again. I don’t know what to feel, and I don’t know what to do. I just know I want to get her back.”

Adora murmured something indecipherable about fur or fours in her sleep, and that shook Bow from his thoughts. Feeling a little embarrassed and infinitely glad that no one awake had heard all that, he stood and walked over to the broken pieces of Adora’s sword on the table at her bedside.

Running a hand down one of the large shards of blade, he softly said, “Sorry for all of that. I know you’re dealing with your own stuff right now. You might not be She-Ra anymore, but you’re still my hero, you know that? And I know Glimmer feels the same way.”

Convinced by then that no one would interrupt Adora’s rest, Bow departed the tent, wiping the lone tear track from his cheek.

* * *

Once they were out of the Chocolate Car, Steven took the initiative to restart the conversation.

“So, any guesses as to where this place is, exactly?” he asked, looking out at the barren desert that the train charged endlessly across.

Catra looked around disinterestedly. “Not really. I really only know of one desert, and this definitely isn’t the Crimson Waste.”

“Oh, yeah. That reminds me. Are you from another planet?” The casualness of that statement surprised Catra.

“I’m gonna say ‘yeah,’” she said. “The planet I’m from has been trapped in a pocket dimension for like a thousand years, and you definitely don’t seem like you’re from there, so…”

“Whoa, this train can reach other dimensions?”

“I guess? I don’t know. People were planning to return us to the universe we came from, so maybe with my luck the first thing the train did upon us making it back was abduct me.”

Steven pondered over this. “Well, maybe this is another dimension too. I mean, this is a really, really long train from what I’ve seen, so you’d figure it’d reach the end of the desert eventually, unless this is like a whole desert planet. And if it could reach two different planets, it’d make sense.”

“I guess,” Catra remarked, tapping the handrails on the gangway between cars with her knuckles as she walked. “If that’s the case, it’d really be pointless to try and cross the desert.”

“Yeah… Oh I almost forgot, I’m from a planet called Earth.”

“Everyone on this train loves answering questions I didn’t ask,” Catra said, reaching the end of the bridge and stepping onto the next train car. “But mine’s called Etheria, so there.”

“Have you heard of the Gem Empire?” Steven asked.

“Nope, never.”

“Huh, well I guess you were in another dimension for a thousand years.” Steven said this mainly to himself. “Plus it is a really big universe.”

“What’re you babbling about?” Catra asked, opening the door into the next car.

“Oh, I’m just wondering if the universe you were originally from is mine or if you’re from a whole different dimension anyway. Really, I’m just wondering what this train can do.”

“Well, good luck trying to figure that one out.”

The new train car contained what appeared to be a large labyrinth. All the walls within were brick and covered in graffiti and fire escapes and trash cans and windows to seemingly nowhere. The overall effect was that the entire train seemed to be filled with a long, winding, interconnected alleyway.

As Catra’s shoulders slumped at the prospect of having to maneuver a huge maze, Steven rushed by her to examine the paths branching off from the first fork in the path. He also paused to examine the graffiti covering almost everything. Some were messages directing people down one path or another or announcing an upcoming dead end. The overall number of clashing signs, though, showed that there was really no genuine way of navigating using those directions, as any sincere attempts at help were ruined by innumerable intentional misdirections.

Beyond those messages were many other even less helpful ones. Some declared admissions of love or statements of regret. Others were simply creative poems or artistic drawings or even just names written in interesting styles. There were also plenty of instances of profanity, some in languages that Steven couldn’t read. The overall method of writing was also notably diverse. There were lots of instances of graffiti made with spray paint, but also some made with paint and brushes, and with markers, and with pens and pencils and crayons. Some people had even taken to carving words into the bricks with knives, while others had splattered them with who knows what and then carved out the letters in the stains.

“Okay, so the graffiti definitely doesn’t seem helpful. Pretty though,” Steven said. “I think I know how we can get through this really easily though."

“Oh, yeah?” remarked Catra with a raised brow. “How’s that?”

Steven placed a hand on the wall to the right. “All you have to do to get through any maze is put a hand on one wall, and then walk through the maze without ever taking your hand off the wall. It makes sure you don’t backtrack or get lost, and if you’re moving through the entire maze, you’re going to reach the exit eventually.”

Catra walked past him, not bothering to put a hand on the wall. “Where’d you learn that?”

“Oh, well Connie taught me.” Steven replied brightly, before a frown almost immediately overtook his wide grin. “She’s, uh―”

His comment was cut off by the sound of Catra’s claws tearing through brick. He looked to see Catra had avoided taking any offshoot paths, and simply walked until she’d reached a wall and then slashed a vaguely circular series of gashes into it. After presenting it dramatically with a wave of her hands, she delivered a sharp kick and the bricks fell through, opening up a hole into the path behind it.

“Well, I guess that works too,” said Steven reluctantly.

He followed her through the opening, crossing through cautiously, afraid more bricks might fall. She continued ahead and when she reached another wall, she just clawed another hole into it. It was inelegant work for sure, but it was working.

“Work smarter, not harder, kid,” Catra remarked. “Don’t let the world bend you to its rules. Make your own path.”

“In this case literally,” Steven muttered. It would’ve been too quiet for Catra to hear had she been a normal human, but she wasn’t, and she replied with a smirk.

As the two continued through the car, Steven paused, pulled out a Malik Moose glitter pen from his bag, and found an empty bit of wall to write on, below a stylized A and beside a crude crayon drawing of a wolf.

_Steven and Catra were here._

He thought for a moment and then added an addendum.

_Sorry for the mess._

* * *

Entrapta squealed in delight as she watched the sky fade into space as the ship rocketed out of Etheria’s atmosphere. She’d spent her entire life in a pocket universe devoid of stars, just void. The sky above had been empty, save for Etheria’s local system of twelve moons. Thanks to Glimmer’s aborted attempt at activating the Heart of Etheria, Entrapta now had an opportunity to explore it all. Planets, stars, asteroids, comets, nebulae, and on and on.

As Entrapta reveled at the new possibilities presenting themselves to her, Bow was cautiously pressing buttons on the ship’s main piloting console. A holographic sphere suddenly generated above the panel, clearly serving as the visual user interface for the ship’s artificial intelligence. It was all fascinatingly ancient and masterfully designed. Entrapta loved the almost anachronically advanced technology of the First Ones. Of course, it would only seem so to a woefully Etheria-centric mindset, but the obvious disparity between the tech of the two cultures was a marvel to behold.

And now, returned to the wider universe, there was no telling how many technological advancements had occurred in Etheria’s absence. Between that and the wealth of astronomical mysteries to uncover, Entrapta was almost overwhelmed with the newfound scientific prospects. She could never discover it all, but she was definitely going to try her darndest.

As the interface announced its designation and functions, Entrapta rushed over to examine it. Adora, meanwhile, left the room quickly, apparently to investigate the rest of the ship and its supplies. Entrapta couldn’t think of any reason why Adora wouldn’t want to converse with a real life First Ones artificial intelligence, but more for her then.

Entrapta made quick friends with the interface, inputting the coordinates that she and the other princesses had acquired. These coordinates would direct the ship to Glimmer’s current location, which was also the flagship of Horde Prime’s fleet. It would no doubt be an even more fascinating technological wonder than the First Ones ship they were riding in, though Entrapta kept that observation from Darla, not wanting to make her jealous.

Darla, for the record, was the name that Entrapta had bestowed to the user interface. It just seemed fitting. Entrapta had a sixth sense for these things. Back when she was building her lovable robot Emily, she’d seriously considered the name ‘Penelope,’ but from the moment the bot took her first shaky steps, Entrapta knew that she was definitely an Emily. It was so obvious in hindsight.

And then Emily had exploded. The next design couldn’t maneuver around walls, and the joints of the third kept locking up. The fourth exploded too. Through all the prototypes and redesigns and new iterations, however, she’d always been Emily at heart.

And just like then, Entrapta knew the ship was a Darla.

The AI accepted the new moniker without hesitation. That was no doubt a result of her user-friendly programming, but Entrapta was also sure Darla really liked it.

With the coordinates set and the ship on course for Glimmer, Entrapta then set to work devising all the improvements and modifications she could make to Darla. She could definitely increase the speed exponentially and the shields could easily be enhanced with a little rewiring here and there.

Bow was vocally opposed to her plans to work on the ship with them inside and in flight. She definitely needed to make him a spacesuit. Custom made of course, and more for herself and Adora, and naturally Glimmer too. Her mind was buzzing with ideas and she began considering the best designs, equal parts aesthetically unique and practical for protection from the endless, crushing void of space.

First things first, she definitely needed a blowtorch.

* * *

Catra picked stray fragments of brick from her claws as she and Steven crossed the gangway to the next car. As she did, she noticed a change in her palm’s number.

“What?” Catra exclaimed. “It went up again?”

In angry defiance she tossed the collected bits of brick over the railing and down to the tracks below. It had gone up nine to 3171. It was now actually higher than her starting number. What had that progress even been for?

“Uh, maybe it was because you brute forced that puzzle back there?” suggested Steven, checking his own palm to see his number was still squarely at 1911.

“So, what? I’m not supposed to think of smart solutions? I’m not supposed to bypass obstacles and be creative? I’m just supposed to work inside whatever boundaries anyone tries to place around me?” Catra threw her arms up in frustration and stomped forward to the red door.

Steven tried to be as inoffensive as possible. “Well, whether it’s right or wrong, I just don’t think the train is going to appreciate you breaking one of its puzzles, is all.”

“It should be impressed I outsmarted its stupid challenge,” griped Catra, opening the door and stepping into the next car, followed shortly after by Steven.

The inside contained a narrow but very long room filled with furniture in all manner of styles. Beds, chairs, couches, sinks, tables, birdbaths and more were placed all around the floor, with everything from portraits and bookshelves to gas lights and cat perches on the walls. The walls were actually a lot narrower than the train from the outside appeared, making Steven wonder whether the space inside was somehow smaller than the outside dimensions, or if there was just an excessive amount of empty space behind the walls.

“What is this place?” asked Catra. “Some kind of storage car?”

Steven couldn’t really think of an answer himself. “Maybe it’s the Furniture Showroom Car or something?”

A pair of high pitched voices from above laughed at the speculation. Catra and Steven looked up to see a squirrel floating by with a helium balloon wrapped around his waist and a mouse riding a flying drone.

“This place is way more fun than that, silly,” said the mouse. “Hey there, visitors! I’m Popinjay!”

“And I’m Buckaroo!” added the squirrel.

“Now, who wants to play a game?” the pair said in unison.

“Ugh, did they rehearse this?” Catra mumbled under her breath.

Steven chuckled, both at the comment and at their hosts’ enthusiasm, and then replied “Sure, we’d love to play a game!”

The two animal friends cheered, and then Popinjay said, “Okay, here’s the rules. They’re really simple.”

“But really fun!” Buckaroo interjected.

“So fun!” Popinjay agreed. “All you have to do is reach the door at the other side of the room without touching the floor.”

As Catra glanced down to see that they both were indeed standing on a welcome mat rather than the floor, Steven clapped his hands together in recognition.

“I know what this is!” he said. He set down his backpack, fished around inside for a moment, and then pulled out a tea candle.

“I see that isn’t moose-themed, for once,” remarked Catra. 

“Oh this is from like two cars before Malik’s,” Steven explained. “I guess you could just call it the Candle Car. I’ve kinda been collecting souvenirs.”

Steven tossed the tea candle onto the floor a few feet ahead. As soon as it made contact, it smoked and burned, melting away in moments.

“The floor is lava!” he exclaimed.

“Whoa, what?” Catra gasped, recoiling at the sight.

Steven jumped forward onto a coffee table. “‘The Floor is Lava.’ It’s like a fun kids game. You act like the floor is lava and you hop around on the furniture without touching the floor.”

“That’s… dumb.” Catra said, leaping carefully onto a tall dresser.

The two began their cautious journey across the car, Steven on the left and Catra on the right, informally forming two parallel lanes without consciously agreeing to do so. Popinjay and Buckaroo wished them good luck and then proceeded to begin a game of midair tag.

“It’s dumb, but it’s also silly fun,” explained Steven, jumping from a television stand to a pool table. “It’s just a game for little kids to play. My, uh, my dad taught it to me.”

That little stutter returned to his voice when he mentioned his dad. This time Catra could make a decent guess as to why.

“What’s up? Daddy issues?” she asked with a smirk, running along the surface of a kitchen island.

“I mean, I guess? We had a bit of a falling out recently, and on top of everything else, I just―”

Catra stopped for a moment, both because of his response and because she’d just landed on an unstable rocking chair and needed to catch her balance.

“Okay, stop. I don’t really care. I was just, I don’t know, being a jerk.”

“Oh,” said Steven, coming to a halt on a divan. “Sorry.”

Catra buried her hands in her face. “Ugh, stop that too. Don’t apologize.”

She leapt onto a long bookshelf on the wall and ran across, sending books crashing to the floor. Steven followed after her, jumping to a stool, then a highchair, then a king-size feather bed.

“So, what about your parents?” he enquired, speaking perhaps a bit too loud due to the loud squeaks of mattress springs.

“Never had any,” Catra responded emotionlessly. “And stop trying to get to know me!”

“Oh, sorry! I never got to know my mom, and I know it’s hard.”

“It’s actually not hard. I never knew them so there’s nothing to miss, okay?”

Steven winced, partly because of the taxidermied deer head mounted on the wall that he’d just passed, but mainly because of Catra’s words. “That’s got to be hard. I at least had pictures and stories about my mom, even if they weren’t all exactly accurate. Is that why you don’t know ‘The Floor is Lava?’”

Catra rolled her eyes so hard her head moved with them. “No, it’s because we didn’t do childish garbage like this in the Horde.” Pausing briefly atop a refrigerator, she amended, “Well, we did have some training scenarios similar to this. We didn’t come up with silly make believe scenarios for it though.”

“The Horde?” Steven asked.

Catra got so mad that she grabbed an empty gravy boat from atop the dining room table she was crossing and chucked it at him. He caught it easily and, examining it momentarily and deeming it a good enough souvenir, stuck it in his bag before continuing after her. He was going to apologize again but she spoke over him.

“Yes, the _evil_ Horde! The big, bad army that spends its days conquering nice, peaceful Etheria. We send in troops and robots to quaint little villages and blow them up until they’re ours. We capture kings and exile prisoners to dangerous islands full of monsters and open portals that nearly destroy reality and ruin stupid, stuffy proms. Happy? You gonna run off and finally get out of my hair? Do the smart thing like everyone else! _Leave. Me. Alone_!”

Whatever Steven’s response was going to be, it was cut off by a high-pitched voice yelling “toot toot” alongside two blasts of an actual, tiny train horn.

The pair, Steven frozen in place and Catra shaking with emotion, looked up to see a small animal riding in the engine of a model train moving along tracks mounted to the ceiling. Catra wasn’t really sure what animal it was, and Steven would’ve guessed weasel, but it was actually a mink.

“Howdy folks!” the mink said enthusiastically. “I’m Pitch! I’d like to congratulate you two on making it halfway through the room. You’re doing so well!”

Catra sighed and charged ahead, swinging from a low-hanging chandelier and landing on a ping pong table, then continuing forward without pause.

“Catra, wait!” Steven called out, racing after her.

“Did you not hear what I said? What’s it going to take. I’ve fought with my best friend multiple times. Like actual battle. She probably has scars from my claws. I threw one of her friends off a cliff! He did get better, though…”

“I mean, obviously that’s not great,” said Steven, accidentally knocking over a jukebox as he moved to jump off of it. Instead he came crashing to the floor with it, luckily rolling to land on its now upward facing back instead of the deadly ground. “But honestly probably half of my friends have tried to kill me at one point or another. You haven’t done that. And you recognize that what you did was wrong.”

“Dammit! Don’t you know a lost cause when you see one?” Catra yelled back, having now achieved a notable lead. 

She grabbed a nearby floor lamp and swung it like a bat toward the furniture on Steven’s side, kicking back the furniture on her own as she moved onward. It was awkward, clumsy work, befitting what was essentially a tantrum, but the end result was that there was now a stretch of about fifteen to twenty feet with no furniture separating Steven from herself. With that accomplished, she threw down the lamp like a sword after a duel, shattering the bulb against the ground, and resumed her race to the exit.

A little gap wasn’t going to stop Steven Universe. He rose to his feet, took a deep breath, and focused his mind. Positive thinking equaled floaty powers. This was second nature at this point. All he had to do was keep his spirits high and his body would likeways easily cross the distance.

He took a step back, which was as many steps as his small platform would allow, breathed in one last deep breath, and then ran and leapt.

“Catra, hold on!”

He thought of his family. Garnet and Amethyst and Pearl. He thought of them all having fun, playing Steven Tag in the snow. But, really, would they want to see him now? Wouldn’t they be so disappointed in him? Was he even a Crystal Gem anymore? What did that title even mean in an era of peace and a time of retirement?

Okay, Greg. Oh, but yeah. Daddy issues. What did he think? What would he say? Connie? Oh no that definitely―

Steven realized then that he wasn’t so much floating as he was plummeting, with several feet to spare. He saw the floor ready to meet him and didn’t know if he’d have time to scream or make a bubble or a shield.

Just as he was about to literally crash and burn, a couch cushion slid into place beneath him. It felt so soft when he landed, so comfortable, that for a moment he just lay there, enjoying the feeling, before looking up to see what had happened. Catra was standing there at the edge of her canyon of furniture, looking both terrified and infuriated.

“What are you doing, you idiot!” She paced back and forth, raising her arms and brushing her hands through her hair and doing little stomps and kicks, feeling ready to bubble over with energy and emotion and having very little space to vent it.

Steven jumped from the cushion to a chess table by Catra. It was a feat possible with mere human agility and normal gravity, but Steven was still a little nervous to try it. He succeeded, though, and Catra even grabbed his arm and helped him to his feet.

“Sorry about that. I can usually make that jump. I, uh, just couldn’t think of any happy thoughts.”

“Right,” Catra said skeptically.

“So, do you regret it?” he asked.

“Saving you? Kind of.”

“No,” said Steven as the pair dusted themselves off and then continued forward. “Do you regret what you did in the Horde?”

Catra groaned loudly. “Can’t we talk about you and your issues, Mr. 1911?”

“Hey!” Steven protested with a soft chuckle. “It’s not as bad as yours. Wait.”

Looking down at his number, he realized it had changed at some point. Now it read 1932.

“It went up?”

Catra laughed this time. She also lifted her hand to show her own number had dropped down to 3160. “See? Not so fun going up, huh? What’d it start at?”

Blushing slightly, Steven responded “1890. It went up and down a few times in the Chocolate Car. Up is where it ended up staying.”

“See? You definitely have lots of personal problems you should talk about instead of bugging me for mine.”

“I would,” said Steven nervously, standing on a tall, thin barstool. “But I don’t think I can risk the negative thoughts right now.”

Catra, a little confused but eager for the silence, relented and the conversation ended until they reached the red door at the end of the room. A guinea pig in a toy helicopter named Carnelli congratulated them on their success. Catra left before he’d finished speaking, but Steven stayed behind to thank him for the fun game before heading out as well.

* * *

The walk back to the Rebellion’s hidden camp was full of a cautious optimism. Everyone was excitedly discussing how things might turn around soon now that Adora, Bow, and Entrapta were on their way to rescue Glimmer. The only one who wasn’t theorizing how Adora would defeat Horde Prime was Micah.

He did truly believe that Adora would save his daughter. He had, however, intended to travel with her and her friends on the trip. He’d had to stay behind in order to distract Prime’s forces away from the ship, though, and now he was left to hope and wait while the others went to free her.

He was starting to feel like waiting in the wings was merely his lot in life. He’d been banished to Beast Island while a war raged on in his stead. In the time he’d been gone, he’d lost his wife without even knowing, and his daughter was captured and whisked far away just moments before he could return to her. With Horde Primes forces rapidly seizing control of Etheria, he’d even lost Bright Moon.

He’d trained since childhood in the art of magic. He’d become a king. He’d fought in the front lines of a war, seeking to protect his new home and his burgeoning family. In spite of that, he’d fallen so many times, been rendered powerless again and again. What was the point of magic, of authority, if he couldn’t protect the people he loved?

He was still mulling this over in his head when the group made it to the secret entrance to the grove in which the Rebellion was hiding. The troubled thoughts filling his mind remained completely hidden from his companions due to the unyielding, seemingly genuine smile he so casually displayed. This instinctual camouflaging of his feelings had developed gradually over his lifetime until it had become second nature. The guilt and trauma over Shadow Weaver’s manipulations, his uncertainty and anxiety over being king, the effects of his time on Beast Island, all buried under a mask. It was perhaps what had kept him so resilient in the face of the island’s despair-inducing influence.

The loss of both of the most important women in his life was sending cracks through that carefully constructed mask, but he refused to let it break. He was in another war and this time he would walk out victorious, for the sake of his family, his people, and himself.

Upon reentering the camp, the group broke apart and headed off in different directions. Perfuma and Scorpia walked off into the woods surrounding the camp, idly chatting with each other. Swift Wind followed after them, apparently not realizing their desire for privacy. Mermista returned to the tent she shared with Sea Hawk, though he was some distance away singing shanties to a few rebellion fighters who clearly would’ve preferred he wasn’t. Frosta raced over to Netossa and Spinnerella, who were relaxing near one of the supply tents. Micah himself approached the tent in which he and the princesses regularly plotted out their next move against the Galactic Horde.

“Hello, Micah.”

Micah sighed audibly, deliberately loud enough to be heard by the person waiting inside. Shadow Weaver had made herself a de facto part of the war council despite her having been a prisoner up until Horde Prime’s invasion took priority. The longer she insisted on intruding upon Rebellion matters, the more Micah considered converting a tent or perhaps a pit into a prison cell. She’d clearly gotten far too comfortable during her regrettably luxurious stay at Bright Moon. Micah loved Angella dearly, but even he thought she could have at least removed all the cushions.

“How was the mission? Has Adora set off to try to retrieve Glimmer?”

Micah set down his staff and, pointedly avoiding eye contact, walked past Shadow Weaver to examine the maps and plans they’d been working on.

“Yes, Adora, Bow, and Entrapta are on their way to rescue Glimmer,” he responded flatly.

“This is a horribly shortsighted decision, Micah. One of our most skilled warriors has now been taken off the board, and you’ve sent her off to the lion’s den.”

Micah rolled his eyes. “I assumed you’d be excited to hear. Once Glimmer is back you’ll have more reason to pester us with misguided plots to use the Heart of Etheria.”

“Well, yes, Glimmer’s return would provide us an essential component needed to properly utilize the Heart, but without She-Ra we would still be lacking a key requirement. More importantly, you have no guarantee that Adora will actually be able to liberate Glimmer. You’ve put so much at risk for one person.”

“First of all,” Micah began, raising a finger in Shadow Weaver’s direction, “this was not my personal choice. I am king of Bright Moon but I do not make unilateral decisions for the Rebellion.” Shadow Weaver moved to speak, but Micah interrupted her with a second raised finger. “Secondly, for all the confidence you seem to have in Adora as an asset in this war, you don’t seem confident she can complete this mission. Do you not think she can save Glimmer?”

“None of us have any real comprehension of the strength or resources of Horde Prime, though we do know that he has a vast fleet and a sizable army operating under a hive mind,” replied Shadow Weaver. “While Adora could prove a key role in carefully planned battles and operations on Etheria, you’ve allowed her to race off into a situation where Horde Prime holds every advantage. And moreso, you don’t even know for sure that Glimmer is even alive.”

Infuriated, Micah threw what he was holding, which happened to be a small figurine modeled after Netossa that Bow had created for strategizing purposes, at Shadow Weaver. She batted it away disinterestedly.

“Glimmer is alive. You have no reason to think otherwise,” Micah said, struggling to keep his voice level.

“Glimmer was captured by Prime,” Shadow Weaver said, her own voice annoyed but even. “He has little reason to hold her captive, unless she’s informed him of the Heart of Etheria.”

“She would never!”

Shadow Weaver picked up and calmly examined Bow’s figurine of Glimmer. “You should hope that she did, because her connection to the Heart might be the only reason Prime would let her live.”

Micah grabbed his staff and stormed out of the tent.

Outside, Netossa, Spinerella, and Frosta seemed to be setting up equipment for some kind of outdoor game. Swift Wind was also back in camp and had started singing improvisational duets with Sea Hawk. Micah was a little surprised that Scorpia and Perfuma, given their remarkably kind and patient natures, had managed to convince Swift Wind to allow them time to themselves.

Micah sped past them all and strode off into the woods, moving quickly but with a controlled sense of purpose so as not to draw attention or concern. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going, but he needed to blow off some steam.

Upon reaching a suitably distant and empty area of the forest, he raised his staff and fired a blast of magic at a nearby tree.

Thick vines wound their way up the tree’s trunk in swirling patterns, and then buds all along the vines bloomed into vibrant pink flowers. More spells transformed the leaves of nearby bushes vivid colors like brilliant orange and baby blue.

Micah liked to think of it as a “constructive tantrum.” It was a habit he had developed during childhood. It provided all of the emotional catharsis that could come from, say, shooting fireballs or breaking rocks, but the results were far more pleasing to the eye. He could vent his anger or his worry without the regret that came from more destructive options. A few topiaries in Bright Moon existed thanks to this practice, actually.

He swung his staff in circles above his head, and a magical wind began to swirl around him, carrying with it an assortment of leaves and petals. He then released the spell, the wind dissipating and leaving its contents to cascade slowly to the ground like multicolored snow.

“Ooh, pretty!”

Micah released an unexpectedly high-pitched yelp and chucked his staff away in alarm. It landed in a now teal bush. He stiffened into a more proper posture and turned to greet his observers, the highly apparent blush on his face betraying his embarrassment.

The speaker was Scorpia, now wearing a crown of colorful orange and pink flowers which were definitely Perfuma’s handiwork rather than Micah’s. Perfuma herself was there as well, admiring the shower of greenery.

“Very pretty,” she said, gently grabbing a petal out of the air. “You’ve really got an eye for flowers, King Micah.”

“Oh, this?” he responded. “I was just, er, venting, I guess. It’s been a day.”

He stepped back against a tree and slid down to sit in the grass. Scorpia and Perfuma followed suit, joining him on the ground.

“I have faith in Adora,” he went on. “She saved me from Beast Island, she’s defeated the Horde again and again. I really think she can rescue Glimmer. I’m just…” He hesitated, weighing his words before continuing. “I’m worried she might not be there to be rescued.”

“Glimmer is fine. I’m sure of it,” assured Scorpia. “She’s one of the toughest people I know, and I used to be in the Horde. She’s strong, and she’s determined, and she’s not going to be beaten by someone like Horde Prime.”

“The Rebellion wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as it was without Glimmer as a leader and a hero,” said Perfuma. “Horde Prime doesn’t know what he’s up against.”

That brought a soft smile to Micah’s face. “I just don’t see how you all handle this so well. Everyone is singing songs and playing games with an intergalactic despot bearing down on us. I’m in full panic mode all day, even if I don’t show it.”

“That’s just life for us,” said Scorpia.

“There’s been a war raging on since before we were born,” explained Perfuma, magically growing a patch of flowers from the ground in front of her with a wave of her hand. “Whether it was the original Rebellion or the new one or all that happened in between. We’ve never really known a time of real peace, but we also couldn’t just wallow in sadness.”

“You had to find happiness and friendship where you can,” continued Scorpia, as she snipped the stems of the new flowers with one of her pincers. “Whether you were in the Horde or the Rebellion. Make friends, tell jokes, sing songs.”

Scorpia passed the cut flowers to Perfuma, who began weaving them together as she stood back onto her feet.

“There’s a real force of good found in friendship, in kindness, in simple pleasures. It keeps you going and keeps the light inside you bright.”

She stepped forward to place her newly constructed flower crown on Micah’s head.

“Try and keep your head up, okay? So when Glimmer gets back safe and sound you can greet her with a smile.”

Satisfied with the hopeful grin on Micah’s face, Perfuma returned to sit beside Scorpia. The trio passed some time with easy, idle conversation and then returned to the camp.

* * *

“Greetings, squishy organics!”

The speaker, a robot with the designation AR-20, was doing very little to ingratiate himself to Steven and Catra. Or, if he was attempting to, he was failing miserably.

He was the first denizen the two had met within what Steven had promptly named “the Gear Car.” It was a large factory filled with turning gears, pounding pistons, whirring engines, and shifting conveyor belts. AR-20 was the first resident they had spoken to, but there were a plethora of similar robots moving around the facility. In fact, it seemed the primary purpose of the factory was to produce more robots.

“This is the Model Stage AR Production Factory. Our state-of-the-art machines generate many AR model robots like myself.”

“Yeah, question,” said Catra. “What’s the point of making so many robots? What are you all for?”

The machinery inside AR-20 hummed loudly for a moment before he responded. “Model AR robots maintain and operate the machinery involved in their creation until development of AS models reaches its practical production phase.”

“So you just create more of yourself until a better design is ready? What happens to you then?”

In his usual flat voice, he responded, “Once production of model AS robots has commenced, all nonessential AR model robots will be decommissioned for parts. Estimated time until all AR robots have been phased out is six point eight days.”

Catra raised her hands in surrender. “Okay, that is morbid, even for me.”

Steven nodded, looking uncomfortable. “Yeah, maybe we should just head on.”

He motioned toward the factory floor with a small nod. Catra looked out at all the machinery, and an idea came to her mind. A wide grin formed on her face, and she climbed up onto a catwalk without a word. Steven focused hard on simple, incorruptibly joy-inducing thoughts, like cake and chocolate hearts and cats, and then leapt high into the air, landing on the catwalk beside her.

“Okay, here’s my idea,” explained Catra. “We did your dumb kid game, even though I was clearly better at it. Now let’s do mine.” She gestured out at all the moving, buzzing machines. “This place is definitely my turf. Let’s see if you can keep up.”

She leapt onto a conveyor belt and rode it out into the factory proper. Steven shook his head incredulously and followed suit.

“You know we could just walk on the floor, right?” he asked.

Catra laughed at this. “Well, where’s the fun in that? And hey, this time there’s no death zone to worry about.”

“Well, you say that…” Steven muttered, noting the sparks of nearby welding torches.

“C’mon, us Horde recruits would play around in the forges and factories all the time,” Catra said, running along a long line of gears without a misstep or moment of hesitation. “The Fright Zone was our playground.”

“So, if I may ask, you didn’t know you were the bad guys at first, right?”

“Well, I picked up on it pretty quickly, honestly, but yeah, most of us never really felt like villains or anything. Not that I would label it that black and white, but whatever,” Catra answered.

“But the place you lived was literally called the _Fright Zone_ ,” teased Steven.

“Okay, okay, enough about me. You owe me embarrassing and traumatizing childhood stories. Tit for tat.”

Steven took a moment to respond. Looking around, he noted that nothing in his path seemed like it would require lengthy jumps, so Steven took the risk of responding.

“Okay, so first off I guess is that my mom died when I was born. I think I mentioned that actually. I was raised by my dad and some of my mom’s friends slash fellow soldiers. Oh, yeah, there was also this big war my mom fought in thousands of years ago. It was sort of, in part, against herself, though? It’s confusing. Or, I mean, it makes total sense but it’d take like an hour to explain and I’m going to assume you’re bored already.”

Catra was more bewildered than bored. “Your mom was thousands of years old? Jeez, Sparkles.”

Without enough information to understand that comparison to Glimmer, Steven simply assumed Catra was coining a nickname for him. He didn’t think she knew about his powers, but the name was definitely a fitting one.

“Right, so I grew up with all these stories about my mom and how amazing and brave she was, and honestly that left me with a lot to live up to,” Steven continued, shimmying along a narrow row of pipes. “But then more and more about her past and her secrets came to light. It was rough because everyone had kind of put her on this pedestal, you know? And they did it because they loved her and they remembered the best parts and they wanted to protect me.

“But in some ways that made it all worse. She was this incredible, larger-than-life being and then as the reality became clear, it tore away more and more at that imaginary, perfect parent. And she did work so hard to be better. In the end, she’d improved so much and kind of become that person everyone remembered, but there was just all this baggage. And it’s like, should I ignore the bad stuff and focus on who she was in the end? Is it even possible to acknowledge her mistakes and still appreciate her for her good deeds at the same time? I mean, I guess there’s a difference in redemption and forgiveness.”

“What do you mean?” asked Catra. She was hanging from the side of a twisting crankshaft, but didn’t seem to be fazed by the constant movement.

Another faint blush appeared on Steven’s cheeks. “Sorry, I’ve really been vomiting words here, huh?” He made a face of disgust at his own metaphor. “I guess it’s just been a while since I really talked to someone, and it’s a little easier when it’s a stranger, and…”

“No, no. It’s fine. What did you mean, though? About redemption and forgiveness.”

“Oh,” Steven said, surprised by Catra’s openness and genuine interest. “I just mean, like, if you become a better person or you work to fix your mistakes then that’s redemption, but it doesn’t mean people are going to forgive you. They might, or some might, but some probably won’t. And, on the flip side, people can forgive you even if you don’t think you’ve earned that. Redemption is you and forgiveness is them, basically.”

Catra didn’t respond, and her face was indecipherable, but Steven thought she was listening.

“So, uh, anyway, I was raised by my mom’s friends, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl. They tried their―”

“Steven!” Catra screamed.

It was a warning, but a somewhat superfluous one, as the rhythmic shaking of the ground under Steven’s feet was sufficient alert. Lost in thought and conversation, he’d wandered onto a conveyor belt covered in presumably scrapped robot parts. Ahead of him were a dozen hydraulic presses, slamming down on the belt in turns, first the even numbered and then the odd.

Carried under the first, he dove forward to avoid being crushed, only to quickly realize that just placed him in danger from the second. He jumped back to avoid it, and then rushed forward once it raised back up. He could hear Catra calling out in alarm but he couldn’t risk diverting his attention.

He repeated the same movements to make it past press number three, but when he made it to number four, he tripped on a pile of scrap metal on the belt. He fell flat on his back, now staring up at the press that was about to crush him. He might not have been able to readily call positive thoughts to mind, but all it took to make a bubble was a strong desire not to be smashed into paste, and he could manage that.

His usual bright pink bubble blossomed around him, and the press slammed ineffectively against its surface. Steven breathed a sigh of relief, only for the next one in line to come crashing down in turn. And then the next did the same.

A memory surfaced in his mind, vivid and inescapable. Yellow Diamond’s giant, booted foot stomping down on him. A rush of fear and a quickly summoned shield. A harsh impact and a rapid descent into unconsciousness. A sensation of separation from his body.

The next press collided with his bubble. Then the next.

“STOP IT!”

A heat beneath his cheeks spread outward, filling his entire body with an uncomfortable inner warmth. Even with his eyes held shut, he could see the pink glow his body was now emitting. A powerful shockwave erupted from inside him, dislodging a press, jamming another, and damaging both the conveyor belt and the support beams holding it up. Ahead of and behind him some presses slammed down again, and another shockwave burst forth.

Machinery was malfunctioning. The carefully orchestrated assembly line had fallen into chaos. Gears were getting jammed or dislodging from their places. Belts were breaking or speeding up or becoming clogged with scrap. Alarms were sounding, red lights were blinking erratically, and all the robots seemed thoroughly lost on what to do now that their carefully crafted systems were breaking down.

As his bubble dissipated, Catra rushed through the collapsing factory over to him. She grabbed him by his arm and leapt forward with him in tow onto a catwalk. Running along it, she spotted the red exit door. It was, regrettably, down on the lower level. They could have leisurely walked to it had she not tried to make a game out of it.

She also noticed a long cable stretching down from the ceiling above the catwalk to some machines near the door. She tore off a short piece of railing and used it to slide down the cable like a makeshift zipline.

Throughout all of this, Steven barely reacted. He moved his feet as she dragged him along and he held onto her side as they slid down the cable, but mostly he was swimming in his own thoughts. The whole car was in complete disarray. The robots were completely unprepared for this and probably in danger. Everything was literally crumbling, and it might never be able to be fixed. And, of course, it was all his fault. Tears welling in his eyes, he followed Catra out of the car without comment.

* * *

Glimmer was almost getting used to sleeping on the hard, uncomfortable surface of her room’s bed, as sad as that was. She didn’t really have the energy to get up regardless. Her only reprieves from her long stays in her prison were the times Horde Prime called upon her. He’d forced her to watch live footage of her friends fighting against his armies, forced her to reveal more and more about the Heart of Etheria, and revealed her dad’s survival just to have another thing to use against her. She was exhausted, emotionally and physically.

Every day one of the Horde clones would show up, deliver a tray of unfamiliar, alien food, and then depart without a word. At least Glimmer assumed it was daily. She had seen no clocks anywhere on the ship, and there was no sunrise or sunset, even if her room had had windows to see them. Now that she thought about it, there was really no reason to assume Prime operated on a twenty-six hour schedule like she was used to. Did he sleep at all, actually?

The day’s tray, still carrying half-eaten food, was placed on the cell’s lone shelf. The chair, meanwhile, was hugging the side of the bed and the wall opposite the door, or rather force field. This was intentional placement on Glimmer’s part, as the chair was currently missing a leg. That broken leg was tucked into Glimmer’s sleeve. She wasn’t quite sure what she was going to do with it, but she knew she couldn’t just wait around for rescue. It’s not that she wasn’t confident that Adora and Bow would come to save her, but rather that she was certain they would. They didn’t know what they’d be walking into, so Glimmer had to do something to escape before they could arrive.

Suddenly, the field covering the exit deactivated, revealing a clone waiting on the other side. It wasn’t the usual time for food delivery, and indeed he wasn’t carrying a tray, so he must be there to escort Glimmer to another meeting with Prime.

Glimmer sighed and got out of bed, walking over without the clone having to beckon her. He collected the tray without a word and departed into the halls, with Glimmer following close behind.

Glimmer had spent her few trips through the halls trying her best to remember the paths she was guided through, as well as attempting to figure out where she wasn’t wanted. She didn’t have much freedom in her walks, but she would subtly edge toward doorways or untaken forks in the path and try to gauge how upset it made the clones. The idea was to find out where she especially wasn’t wanted, though it was a bit hard to tell given her escort’s reactions to her deviations tended to be universally excessive.

She cautiously began to remove the implement from her sleeve as she spoke to the clone. “So, where are we going this time.”

“Horde Prime has requested your presence,” he responded flatly.

“I figured,” said Glimmer. “Where am I meeting him this time, though?”

“You will meet with Horde Prime at his requested time and location. You will not question. He is unfailingly wise, and you will trust his judgment implicitly.” A mild tone of annoyance entered the clone’s voice, but his body language remained unaffected.

The voice, with its faint anger, called to mind Hordak. Horde Prime and all of his derivatives had the same voice, but Prime’s was charismatic and endlessly confident. Though she had had few personal encounters with Hordak, Glimmer associated him with cruelty and aggression. He was far more open about his malevolence than his progenitor.

“Are you Hordak?” Glimmer asked. “Actually, is he still around even? He got dragged off for ‘reconditioning,’ but Prime seems like the type to use words like that instead of ‘exiled’ or ‘executed.’”

It was a harsh statement, but Glimmer’s sympathy for Hordak was low and her desire to speak harshly of Prime was quite high. The comment was enough to get her guide to break his calm demeanor. Rage was made clear by his shaking shoulders.

“You will not speak such heresies! We are all equal servants to our master. We do not designate ourselves with such blasphemous, divisive brands. We are all minor fragments of our lord’s light, nothing more.”

He whipped around and raised a finger to Glimmer. “You will not defy Horde Prime in this way! Your insolence is a violation of his glorious will!”

Glimmer retreated, her back quickly hitting the wall. She moved her arm behind her to obscure the partially exposed piece of chair leg in her sleeve.

Suddenly, the clone seized up, arm snapping back to his side. Glowing white pupils entered his usually completely green eyes. When he spoke, it was with Prime’s unmistakable tone of voice.

“Oh, Your Highness, you’ve upset my servant, it seems. You really must avoid speaking such blasphemies around the Horde. This particular vessel is not the one you refer to with the false epithet of ‘Hordak.'” A slight tone of disgust came with that last word. “It would be inconvenient if you sabotaged his reconditioning.”

He turned away to gesture down the hall. “Now, if you could simply continue your―”

His statement was interrupted when Glimmer struck him in the back with the chair leg. It wasn’t a particularly disarming attack, but it was enough to get him to stumble down onto his knees. Another wild strike hit him on the back of the neck, and this actually got him to collapse, sparks crackling around the port where he was struck. She had seen Prime forcibly interface with Hordak there when they were first abducted, and she was glad to see it indeed functioned as a significant weak point.

Glimmer sprinted down the hall, certain that the rest of the Horde on the ship had suddenly gone into red alert. She wasn’t sure she would be able to find a way to escape, but if she failed to it would at least provide her with more recon. She also felt confident that Prime saw her as necessary in order to use the Heart of Etheria, so while he was almost certainly angry, she didn’t think her life was in much danger. Really, it had been worth it just to hit Prime. She hoped he’d felt the blows.

She raced down the halls, heading toward an area that seemed particularly off limits. At least, she was pretty sure it was in the direction she was running. The labyrinthine architecture of the ship had remained as baffling as ever, despite her best efforts. Still, she was pretty sure she knew where she was going, though not what was exactly there.

As she maneuvered the halls, a trio of Horde clones emerged from a doorway on the right side of the hall. Hoping to avoid a direct confrontation if possible, Glimmer picked up the pace, sprinting even faster and praying the clones didn’t have any ranged weaponry. After several more seconds, lasers and rockets failed to make an appearance, so Glimmer felt fairly assured that they didn’t. She could hear them pursuing close behind her, but refused to look back.

Soon a fork in the path came into sight, and Glimmer prepared to enter the left hallway as planned. Another group of three clones waiting in the entrance threatened to ruin that plan, but she refused to let them corral her.

One lunged forward, and she avoided his grasp with a sidestep and a sharp kick to the back of his left knee. The other two leapt into action, and she responded by striking the first hard in the jaw with her makeshift club and then following it up with a blow to the back of the other’s neck. The satisfying pop of sparks declared a direct hit on his interface port, and he collapsed to the ground.

She began another swing at the clone with the now possibly broken jaw, but stumbled when the first of the clones, kneeling on the ground behind her, grabbed her wrist and yanked her back, disturbing her balance. The still standing clone took the opportunity to rip the chair leg out of her grasp.

Glimmer struck that clone in the gut with her knee, and then spun around in an inelegant but effective roundhouse kick, pulling her arm out of the clones grip and striking him with a blow which was aimed at his chin but actually landed on the side of his neck. He fell to the ground gasping for air, and Glimmer took out the last of the three guards by grabbing him by his shoulders and slamming him backwards into the wall, the port on his neck hitting it with a pop.

The hallway was now unobscured but the first trio of clones that she’d managed to somewhat outpace were now about to close in. Glimmer charged forward, scooping up the chair leg as she did.

The new hallway was, for all appearances, exactly like all the others. Aside from the effort being undertaken to try and stop her trespassing, there was nothing to indicate that there was anything noteworthy within. With little to lose, however, Glimmer continued onward.

Glimmer passed a number of doorways on both sides of the hall, leading into unremarkable rooms like computer labs, storage spaces, and trophy rooms displaying souvenirs of Prime’s conquests. Glimmer paid these rooms little mind as she ran, only sparing them glances to see if they might be what she was looking for.

Though she hadn’t let herself really dwell on it, dreading false hope, she truly wished to come across a way out. Maybe she could find escape pods or a teleportation station or a hangar of ships. She hadn’t found anything like that so far, though.

After what seemed like a rather short time, she saw the end of the hall. There was a doorway there, and there were two more clones standing guard. Both of them were equipped with arm-mounted laser cannons, appearing to be a sleeker version of the weapon Hordak had used during his time on the battlefield in the final months before Etheria’s return to the wider universe. They were waiting for Glimmer’s approach, cannons raised.

Glimmer ducked down as she charged forward, avoiding the first volley of lasers. Gasps of pain behind her indicated that what sounded like two of her three pursuers had been struck instead. With a sly grin, Glimmer chucked her weapon at the two armed guards, striking the one on the left in the ankle. Collapsing to one knee in pain, his next shot went wide. The other clone, however, was unobstructed in his attack. Glimmer tried her best to leap out of the way, but the blast struck her in the shoulder. The laser was luckily concussive, rather than heat-based, causing Glimmer to stumble but not preventing her advance entirely. Her shoulder was nonetheless in a lot of pain, leaving her worried something there might be bruised or broken.

Her speed had faltered enough that the last of the original three left standing managed to catch up to her, grabbing her by the arm. Luckily, it was the arm not connected to her injured shoulder. She spun on the spot, pulling the clone forward into the line of fire, protecting her from the next blast. The clone was thrown backward by the force of the blast, but Glimmer stopped him with her arms and rushed forward, using him as an unwilling shield.

The standing armed guard gave a grunt of annoyance and shoved aside the clone with a backhanded strike. Glimmer, having now reached the two sentries, retrieved her thrown chair leg and struck the standing one with an upward blow to the chin. She then turned to hit the other clone, only for him to take hold of her club. He raised his own weapon to aim for a point-blank attack, but Glimmer pushed it aside at the last moment, causing the blast to hit the wall beside them. The force of the impact threw both of them into the opposite wall.

Glimmer recovered first, but her vision was blurred by the brightness of the laser. She attempted to strike the disoriented clone in the back of the neck, but the club instead hit him square on the nose. She tried again, and again, and then the fourth hit rang true with a satisfying pop of electrical discharge. Her vision returning, she disabled the other guard with one well-aimed hit.

Glimmer then stepped into the room they had been guarding and was dismayed to see that it didn’t contain any means of escape. Instead, it was filled with large glass containers with clones inside, floating in an amniotic fluid. Unlike other clone containers she’d seen through doorways, these were all in various stages of early development. They all resembled young, even fetal in some cases, Horde Primes. She watched as another container, this one containing a particularly early stage clone, emerged from a large machine and was placed alongside the rest.

Hearing more guards approaching, Glimmer set to work, striking computer panels and glass screens at random. As clones raced into the room, Glimmer managed to deactivate the cloning machine by stabbing her chair leg into a particularly important looking bit of machinery. The clones approached her, some aiming their own laser cannons, and Glimmer complied with them peacefully. She placed her hands on her head and knelt on the floor. She had known that her efforts might not amount to an escape attempt, and she was still confident that Prime considered her an essential asset.

The clones seized her roughly and escorted her forcibly to Prime’s throne room. Inside he was sitting on his throne, connected to it by several tubes. They seemed to be carrying glowing green liquid into his body, and at the places they attached to him his veins were even glowing similarly. It was an unsettling sight.

“That was most foolish, princess,” Prime began. “Your efforts have done little but annoy me. My forces will recover, and my machines will be repaired. You have hurt no one but yourself.”

Glimmer was forced into a reverent kneel by her captors. The pair of clones attending to Prime stepped aside, and he arose from his throne, tubes disconnecting from the throne, with most of them returning to their usual function as pseudo-hair.

Approaching his captive calmly and gesturing at his hair, he remarked “A tedious process, to be sure. Immortality has its costs, and this is a necessity to provide this corporeal vessel with the means to channel my brilliance. It could not maintain itself for long, otherwise.”

Glimmer wanted to respond with a snarky remark or a roll of her eyes, but she could feel her wounds ache as he strode toward her. She had willfully defied him, and she didn’t regret it, but she was feeling slightly less essential than she’d hoped.

Prime touched her injured shoulder lightly, causing her to wince. His hand trailed from her shoulder to the bandages on her neck and then to her chin, lifting her gaze up to meet his.

“I’m afraid I must punish you for your defiance. I tried to be a good host but I can only overlook so much.” His tone was stern but not aggressive, like a parent discussing misbehavior with their child. “On to the matter at hand, though, I do have something I wish to discuss with you.”

He knelt down to speak with her at her current height. His hair tendrils emerged from their holsters and again began to weave to and fro threateningly. “I wish to know more about Adora. Let us begin.”

* * *

“Whoa, what was that? I didn’t know you had magic! I mean, it was seriously impressive, don’t get me wrong, but what was that?”

Catra was still reeling from what had happened in the Gear Car. As she paced back and forth, reflecting on everything, Steven hurriedly readjusted his jacket and checked his bag for damage without saying a word. While neither had checked their number recently, Catra’s had fallen to 3122 and Steven’s had risen to 1971. It would be a while before they noticed this.

“You’ve got to do that again!” Catra said excitedly.

Steven held up his hands in disagreement. “No! Did you not see what happened? I just ruined everything! I always―”

Steven yelped upon seeing that not only was his hand still glowing pink, it had now swollen to over twice its normal size. As he recoiled at the sight, his shoulder bulged out as well, becoming much larger than usual.

“Whoa, Steven, are you okay?” Catra was both alarmed and seemingly sincerely concerned for him. Steven would normally have enjoyed that observation, but not right now.

Without warning, Steven turned and sprinted toward the next car, moving much faster than Catra would have suspected him capable of.

“Leave me alone! You’re just going to get hurt!”

Catra raced after him, catching him close to the end of the gangway. She placed a hand on his shoulder and urged him to calm down and explain what was happening, but he just whipped around and screamed.

“BACK OFF!”

Another shockwave like before blasted outward, sending Catra flying and severely damaging the gangway. Segments of it broke off and fell to the rails below.

Impulsive anger turning immediately to regret and fear, Steven rushed forward to Catra’s aid. He moved so fast that from his own perspective time had slowed to a crawl. He scooped her up onto his shoulder and then ran back to the outside of the Gear Car.

Feeling disoriented and a little sick to her stomach from what was, from her point of view, a near instant transportation to the Gear Car’s exterior, Catra struggled to stand, and halted the effort she was making to do so when she saw the entire next train car start to move. The closer half of the gangway retracted into the platform she and Steven were standing on. The remaining bits still connected to the next car retracted as well, while the pieces that had been connected to the Gear Car’s half detached and dropped downwards. The giant wheels of the car lifted off the rails and rode up specially designed tracks on the exterior of the Gear Car and the car ahead of it. They’d always been there on every car, but neither Catra nor Steven had paid them any mind. Once the car had risen above the rest, it sped away across the roofs of the cars ahead of it, heading in the direction of the presumed engine. Once it was gone, the gangways extended again, now bridging the Gear Car with the one that had just been one past the departing car.

“Well, that explains the mystery of the Moose Comedian Car, or whatever,” Catra noted. She turned to share this observation with Steven, only to see that he’d already run off in the direction of the next car.

Catra groaned loudly and griped under her breath.

“If we’re not saving each other, we’re trying to kill each other. Who does that remind you of?”


End file.
